Tag Archives: Creature

A beautiful turquoise‑and‑lilac sea creature that has been kept in hobbyist aquariums around the world for nearly two decades has finally been given a scientific species name. The modest crustacean hiding in plain sight turns out to be Cherax pulverulentus, an entirely new crayfish species no biologist had cataloged until now. Jiří Patoka of the Czech University of …

A remarkable discovery of ancient fish fossils has revealed a chilling and unusual pattern: Tharsis, a now-extinct genus of ray-finned fish, may have met its end in the same tragic way. Analysis of fossilized specimens has shown that these carnivorous fish, which lived during the Jurassic period, frequently died with belemnites—large cephalopods—lodged in their gullets. This bizarre and fatal phenomenon …