Octo-Potus — Scientists Discover Ancient Ten-Armed Octopus And Name It After President Joe Biden

Scientists named the animal Syllipsimopodi bideni, derived from the Greek words “syllípsimos” for “prehensile” and “pódi” for “foot,” along with “bideni” after President Biden.

The animal, which lived around 330 million years ago in what is now Montana and represents the earliest known relative of octopuses and vampire squid (known collectively as vampyropods), had a torpedo-like body, 10 arms, fins, and rows of suckers to grasp prey, the scientists said.

One pair of arms were considerably longer than the others, similar to modern-day squid, the researchers wrote, and were likely used to capture prey.

It is the “first and only known vampyropod to possess 10 functional appendages,” said lead author Christopher Whalen, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History and Yale University, and about 82 million years older than the earliest known animal from the group.

The discovery offer a revised account of cephalopod evolution, the researchers said, supporting the idea that octopuses evolved to have eight arms by losing two over time and, Whalen said, potentially confirming for the first time that all cephalopods ancestrally possessed ten arms (all previous vampyropod fossils, which are generally quite poorly preserved, had just eight).