An animal that could be mistaken for a spiky fruit is giving scientists a peek into what mollusks looked like around 500 million years ago.
Fossils of an ancient invertebrate dubbed Shishania aculeata show that the animal was a sluglike creature covered in prickly armor, researchers report in the Aug. 2 Science. The find bolsters evidence suggesting that early mollusks lacked shells and were covered in spikes made of chitin, a fibrous material found in present-day crab and other mollusk shells (SN: 10/13/22).
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