Posted for Mico Tatalovic
That you can extract ink from a 150 million old squid-like fossil and still use it to draw is pretty cool and so it caused a bit of a media frenzy this week.
Phil Wilby, a researcher at the British Geological Survey who is behind the discovery of the fossil and the subsequent drawing, ground the solidified, black ink from a fossil of an ancient squid like animal (Belemnotheutis antiquus) and then mixed it with ammonia to create a paint then used to draw a picture of the animal. This might suggest that the ancient ink has similar properties to modern ink, something that awaits confirmation from Yale University in America where it was sent for an in-depth chemical analysis, after which the results will be published.
Wilby told Nature that “fossil cephalopod ink has been found in even older specimens (more than 300 million years old) and, counter intuitively, appears to be amongst the most frequently fossilised soft tissues.”
The fossil was discovered in the long lost Victorian excavation site in Trowbridge, UK, which was renowned for the abundance of soft-tissue fossils. After re-discovering the site, Wilby and his team reported their preliminary findings from a trial excavation in Geology Today last year.
It was, they write, a “Calamari killing-field”, where it is most likely that a lack of oxygen in the water caused a mass death of animals. This carion attracted predatory squid-like creatures that came to feed on the animals only to die themselves, often holding prey in their tentacles.
In Victorian times the site “yielded an incredible diversity of exquisitely preserved fossils, but became best known for the presence of coleoid cephalopods (belemnites and predominately soft-bodied, or ‘naked’, squid-like animals) with their entire soft-part anatomy preserved, including the muscular body, the ink sac, the fins and the arms replete with suckers and hooks.”
Wilby told the Daily Telegraph that the ink from this new ink sack “is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it. I suppose we could theoretically use it for food colouring, too, but I don’t think I will try tasting it”.
Image: the drawing / BGS©NERC