Cephalopod News

Meet the tiny adorable “dawn horn,” Eoceras shaanxiense! It’s the oldest cephalopod fossil yet found, 30 million years more ancient than the previous record-holder, Plectronoceras cambria. Thanks to Katie for bringing it to my attention!

Scientists identified the tiny (1-4 millimeter) shells as cephalopods because they’re divided into chambers connected by a tube. This is the iconic cephalopod trait, long predating suction cups and color-changing skin. The tube, called a siphuncle, can exchange gas for liquid in the chambers, lifting the animal off the seafloor.

Eoceras, however, probably wasn’t zooming around up in the water. As Earth.com reports:

The fast, predatory lifestyle [cephalopods are] known for came later, once the plumbing improved. What Eoceras shaanxiense offers is the moment before that, when the hardware was still crude.

Some researchers have contended that even Plectronoceras with its more advanced siphuncle still only bopped around close to the bottom. Oh, for a time machine to observe the facts!

Though it can’t document ancient cephalopods, a different and very cool machine recently used sound waves, lasers, and cameras to map the famed “Octopus Garden” in Monterey Canyon. As described in Autonotion:

Sound waves go right through soft tissue and bounce off the hard rock underneath. Laser light stops at the first thing it hits. So if you lay the two maps on top of each other, the bumps that only show up in the laser map are, for the most part, animals. On a hill that’s carpeted in octopus, you can see why that’s useful.

Thanks to my uncle Bruce for sending me the article!

My News

I celebrated Jeanne Villepreux-Power’s birthday on September 25th by explaining why it’s often erroneously stated as September 24th (and correcting it on Wikipedia).

I’ve also been celebrating International Cephalopod Awareness Days, October 8-12, by sharing art on Bluesky! If you’re not sure how to celebrate, may I humbly suggest purchasing a cephalopod book for yourself or a loved one? You can order a signed copy of any of my books through lovely local bookstore Hicklebee’s; simply specify what inscription you’d like at checkout.

This still feels surreal, but in a few days I’ll be flying to Japan to participate in an octopus outreach event in Okinawa! It was an incredible honor to be invited and I can’t wait to meet everyone involved.

We’ve already received some fantastic questions, like What do octopuses think about in their daily lives? and If you woke up one morning and found that you had become an octopus, what would be the first thing you would want to do?

The talks are already full, but if you’re in Okinawa and want to connect, please let me know!

Stay tuned for many upcoming events in 2027…

Funny Pages

Inktober (31 daily art prompts for the month of October) always exerts a pull on my fingers. Although I don’t have time to do them all this year, I’ve combined a few prompts with my new favorite cephalopod.