A fossil hunter’s find in the Wyoming badlands just forced scientists to rewrite part of the ancient sea creature family tree.
Story Snapshot
- Scientists identified a brand-new species called Wyoteuthis linsterorum from two fossils found in Wyoming.
- The creature is an extinct relative of squid and octopuses, not a true squid, dating back about 160 million years.
- Researchers say it belongs to a family thought to have died out long before this animal was alive.
- The find comes from just two fossils, so scientists still have plenty of work left to confirm how it fits in.
American Researchers Name A New Ancient Creature
A team of scientists from the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand published a formal study naming a new genus and species: Wyoteuthis linsterorum. The researchers, Alexey Ippolitov, Jessica Lippincott, William Wahl, and Dean Lomax, based their work on two unusual fossil remains dug up in Wyoming. Their findings appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Papers in Palaeontology this year.
The fossils come from a group of ancient sea animals called belemnites. Belemnites were squid-like creatures that lived in the ocean during the age of dinosaurs. They are distant cousins of today’s squid and octopuses, but they are not the same animal. Their hard internal skeleton, called a rostrum, is usually the only part that survives as a fossil.
Why This Fossil Stands Out From The Rest
What makes these two Wyoming fossils so unusual is their size and shape. Most belemnite fossils are long and slender, almost like a bullet. These two specimens measure roughly 60 millimeters across at their widest point, making them the thickest, chunkiest belemnite fossils scientists have ever recorded.
Local fossil hunters in Wyoming have long nicknamed common belemnite fossils “squid butts” because of their shape. When these two oversized specimens turned up, researchers quickly realized they did not match anything seen before. The fossils were pulled from the upper Sundance Formation, a rock layer dating to the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic period, roughly 160 million years ago.
A Family Thought To Be Long Extinct
The research team placed Wyoteuthis into a family called Megateuthididae. Scientists previously believed this family had already died out millions of years before this animal was alive. Researchers say CT scans of the internal structure linked the Wyoming fossils to that older family, suggesting the lineage survived much longer than anyone had realized.
The chunkiest squid-like fossil ever found 🦑
Wyoteuthis linsterorum — a 160-million-year-old belemnite from Wyoming's ancient Sundance Sea — had a 6-cm-wide barrel-shaped skeleton, the fattest ever recorded.
A lineage thought long extinct, still thriving.https://t.co/PlXzIe1olO— The Incredible Daily (@lincroyableli) October 23, 2026
The study rests on just two fossils, which is a small sample size for naming a brand-new species. Scientists typically want more specimens to rule out individual differences or damage from fossilization before locking in a new classification. The research team has called for more fieldwork in Wyoming to find additional fossils and strengthen the case.
Belemnite classification has always relied heavily on the shape, grooves, and cross-section of the rostrum, since that is usually all that survives. This is a tried-and-true method paleontologists have used for decades, even though experts admit the field still has unresolved questions about where one species ends and another begins. For now, the Wyoming discovery stands as a striking example of how much is still buried beneath American soil waiting to be found.
Sources:
sciencedaily.com, onlinelibrary.wiley.com, esp.md, natureworldnews.com, foxweather.com, discovermagazine.com
