Dive into the Past: Discover Punk and Emo, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fossils Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Early Mollusks!

Step aside Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance—two fresh rockstars have now appeared in the punk and emo arena.

Introducing Punk ferox and Emo vorticaudum, two recently uncovered fossils challenging scientists’ prior hypotheses concerning a lineage of ancient mollusks. The duo of over 430-million-year-old beings, elaborated upon in the journal Nature last week, indicates that these long-gone species are not as rudimentary as paleontologists previously believed.

“The titles Punk and Emo were actually our initial nicknames for these ancient mollusks, inspired by some of their distinct characteristics and uniqueness,” Mark Sutton, a paleontologist at Imperial College London who spearheaded the study, states in a remark. “Punk in particular, due to its spiky look, clearly resembles a defiant punk rocker—and we thought Emo fit it well.”

Mollusks are the second largest animal phylum globally, surpassed only by Arthropods (a classification that encompasses insects, spiders, and crustaceans). Researchers estimate the Earth could be home to around 200,000 species of mollusks. However, this extensive diversity condenses into two primary categories: the conchiferans, which covers creatures such as snails, clams, and octopuses, and the aculiferans, a “bizarre and quirky faction of spiny entities” that includes “obscure, unusual molluscan worms,” as Sutton informs the New York Times’ Kate Golembiewski.

Punk and Emo are classified under the latter category—and they are indeed “bizarre” and “spiny.” Both Punk and Emo are characterized as worm-like mollusks with elongated spines and smooth undersides, indicating they lived on the seafloor. Punk possessed gills and a broad foot with ridges underneath, distinguishing it from currently existing species. Emo, on the other hand, had a pair of small shells and a flattened body. Specifically, Sutton identified Punk’s spines closely resembling traditional punk hairstyles, while Emo’s more downward-tilting spines evoke emo bangs, according to the New York Times.

While researchers remain uncertain how Punk would have navigated, they discovered Emo in a curled position suggesting an inchworm-like movement, possibly aided by its spines. However, “the spikes are likely primarily for defense,” Sutton tells New Scientist’s Chris Simms, though he adds that they might have developed to dispose of excess calcium from the animal’s body—and both interpretations could hold validity. The mollusks were petite, measuring approximately 0.79 inches in length.

Aculiferans like Punk and Emo were “long considered to possess a far more restricted form” than familiar mollusks, as Derek Briggs, a paleontologist at Yale University and co-author of the research, remarks in a statement. Now, these remarkable fossils demonstrate their group was “extraordinarily varied in the remote past, compared to contemporary times,” he affirms.

Briggs and his colleagues unearthed Punk and Emo preserved in 3D within rocks from a location referred to as the Herefordshire Lagerstätte in the United Kingdom, dating back to the middle of the Silurian period (approximately 420 million to 443 million years ago). The fossils were so delicate that the scientists couldn’t merely split the stones in half, and their density was so comparable to the surrounding stone that even CT scans wouldn’t have provided a clear visualization of the creatures. Instead, they meticulously sliced the fossils by hand and captured images of each minute section.

“We grind away a slice at a time, take a photo, and repeat at intervals of about 20 microns or so,” Sutton relates to the New York Times. Although this approach led to the demise of the fossils—transformed into dust by the process—the scientists managed to compile the photographs into intricate 3D models of the mollusks.

“I truly admire the names, and they are exceptionally fitting for these spiky mollusks,” Luke Parry, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford in England who was not part of the study, shares with New Scientist. “Fossil mollusks that preserve soft tissues like this are incredibly uncommon, so witnessing what these extraordinary ancient organisms appeared like in 3D is simply magnificent. This site in Herefordshire seems like a treasure trove, akin to a wormy mollusk Pompeii.”