Oldest octopus fossil ever found named after US president
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The eight-legged creatures you know and love today used to have 10, according to this discovery!
Scientists have found the oldest relative of octopuses in America - and it's 330 million years old!
It was found in Montana, a state in the west of the US, and scientists say the discovery mean the sea creatures lived millions of years earlier than previously thought.
In fact, early octopuses lived before even the dinosaurs did!
This is the 330 million year old fossil
The scientists decided to give their discovery a very special name - they called it Syllipsimopodi bideni, after US President Joe Biden.
They said it was to recognise the work he does for science and research, and it means he has a train station, an ice cream flavour, and now a sea creature named after him.
It's very rare to find such well-preserved fossils of animals largely made from soft tissue, as that part of creature's body is usually quite quick to decay.
While modern octopuses have eight legs, this early relative has 10, and is the only known fossil that's been found with this many. Each limb has two rows of suckers, and the whole fossil is 4.7 inches (12 cm) long.
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Christopher Whalen, an American Museum of Natural History palaeontologist and co-author of the study said the fossil also "shows some evidence of an ink sac", probably used to squirt out dark liquid to help to escape predators, just like modern octopuses.
The creature is called a vampyropod. Scientists think it was likely the ancestor of both modern octopuses and vampire squid.
These living fossils (which means they've not changed much for millions of years) are confusingly not actually squids
They're quite similar to octopuses in some ways - for example, they have eight long limbs
They live very deep in the ocean, about half a mile down
Because of this, they have very large eyes, so they can see better
Previously, the "oldest known definitive" vampyropod was from around 240m years ago, the people who studied this one said.
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