A famous 300-million-year-old fossil that was thought to be the world’s oldest octopus—even featuring in the Guinness Book of Records—has turned out to be something else altogether. In what amounts to a case of mistaken identity, the fossil hid its true nature through decay 300 million years ago, before being fossilized.
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It was a nautilus relative that had been decomposing for weeks before it became buried and later preserved in rock, and that decomposition is what made it look so convincingly octopus-like.
