Happy Atheist Forum

Translated: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." Doesn't seem an appropriate title for a science thread, you may say. Perhaps you're right, but apparently there's at least one palæontologist who is familiar with the Lovecraft mythos, and doesn't mind people knowing that.  :snicker1:

"'Cthulhu' fossil reconstruction reveals monstrous relative of modern sea cucumbers" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190409192148.htm)

QuoteAn exceptionally-preserved fossil from Herefordshire in the UK has given new insights into the early evolution of sea cucumbers, the group that includes the sea pig and its relatives, according to a new article published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Palaeontologists from the UK and USA created an accurate 3D computer reconstruction of the 430 million-year-old fossil which allowed them to identify it as a species new to science. They named the animal Sollasina cthulhu due to its resemblance to monsters from the fictional Cthulhu universe created by author H.P. Lovecraft.

Although the fossil is just 3 cm wide, its many long tentacles would have made it appear quite monstrous to other small sea creatures alive at the time. It is thought that these tentacles, or 'tube feet', were used to capture food and crawl over the seafloor.

Like other fossils from Herefordshire, Sollasina cthulhu was studied using a method that involved grinding it away, layer-by-layer, with a photograph taken at each stage. This produced hundreds of slice images, which were digitally reconstructed as a 'virtual fossil'.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190409192148.htm)]

Artist's rendering from another article (https://www.sciencealert.com/newly-discovered-ancient-sea-creature-is-the-world-s-most-underwhelming-cthulhu):

Yikes. Looks so alien it could be an artist's rendition of what an extraterrestrial species would look like.

Early life never ceases to amaze me.