29 July 2026
The locomotion of modern cephalopods, such as squid and cuttlefish, relies on buoyancy control achieved mainly by a specialized structure called a siphuncle. The discovery of fossils of Eoceras — a millimetre-sized cephalopod with a siphuncle — suggests that the group had already emerged in the early Cambrian, around 520 million years ago.
This is a summary of: Song, Z. et al. Earliest siphuncle-bearing cephalopod from the early Cambrian. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10868-y (2026).
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