Abstract
Exceptional fossil preservation is required to conserve soft-bodied fossils and even more so to conserve their behaviour. Here, we describe a fossil of a co-occurrence of representatives of two different octobrachian coleoid species. The fossils are from the Toarcian Posidonienschiefer of Ohmden near Holzmaden, Germany. The two animals died in the act of predation, i.e. one had caught the other and had begun to nibble on it, when they possibly sank into hypoxic waters and suffocated (distraction sinking). This supports the idea that primitive vampyromorphs pursued diverse feeding strategies and were not yet adapted to being opportunistic feeders in oxygen minimum zones like their modern relative Vampyroteuthis.
Highlights
Behavioural patterns of extinct animals can be studied either by trace fossils or ‘frozen behaviour’ (Boucot 1990; Radwański et al 2009; Jenny et al 2019; Hoffmann et al 2020), i.e. when an animal became embedded in the sediment in a posture enshrining an aspect of its behaviour
The two more or less complete octobrachian fossils lie on a large slab of Posidonienschiefer, which measures 640 × 170 mm (Fig. 1)
The remarkable size of the specimen points to Jeletzkyteuthis coriacea, whose gladiuses regularly exceed 200 mm in length
Summary
Behavioural patterns of extinct animals can be studied either by trace fossils or ‘frozen behaviour’ (Boucot 1990; Radwański et al 2009; Jenny et al 2019; Hoffmann et al 2020), i.e. when an animal became embedded in the sediment in a posture enshrining an aspect of its behaviour. Such cases are of special interest, because they may document interactions between individuals of one or more species (e.g., Radwański et al 2009; Jenny et al 2019; Hoffmann et al 2020; Mapes et al 2019). The most widely accepted explanation for the exceptional fossil preservation is the fluctuating oxygen content of bottom waters, which often were quite low (Röhl et al 2001, 2002)
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