The first thousand five hundred and eighty-three chapters of the aurora corner stone
When the nautilus floats or sinks, it depends on the inflation and deflation of several air chambers in the shell.
They can swim in the water with their inflated shells, or "escape from rapids" by spraying water from a funnel.
After the storm, on a calm night on the sea, the nautilus floats comfortably on the sea surface, with the shell upward, the mouth of the shell downward, and its head and wrists fully extended.
These animals are nocturnal and their main food is benthic crustaceans, especially small crabs.
At present, the number of nautilus living in the bottom of the deep sea around the world is very rare. In my country, it can only be found in the South China Sea Islands and the deep sea area of the southern part of Bend Island. Our country has designated it as a first-level key protected animal. It can be seen in many foreign museums. Most of the time, only its beautiful body specimens can be seen.
Therefore, after learning that it was possible to find a living nautilus, the Korean peacock was full of surprises.
"Don't be too happy. We can only guarantee that there is probably a nautilus here, and some people have actually found it here. As for whether you can find it, we can't guarantee it." Seeing Han
The peacock was so happy that the dive guide could only tell the truth.
"So you don't even know if there are nautiluses here?" Yuan Peng asked strangely.
"Although no nautilus has been discovered in the past ten years, some people have discovered different nautiluses." Qian Dao said.
"Animal Nautilus?" Chen Qing asked.
"Anisonautilus is well-deserved as the 'deepest secret'. Scientists have not seen this kind of living fossil for more than 30 years in a row, and it was only recently discovered again." the dive guide replied.
In 1984, Peter Ward, a biologist at the University of Washington, and his colleague Bruce Sanders discovered Allonautilus for the first time.
This furry, slimy Allonautilus looks a lot like the better-known Pearl Nautilus, but it's actually a completely new and only species of Nautilus.
Subsequently, Allonautilus disappeared from the sight of scientists.
Recently in Papua New Guinea, someone tried to find traces of the Allonautilus. As a result, they not only found the Allonautilus, but also took digital images of its health state on the seabed and successfully set up a tracking device.
In the eyes of scientists, the nautilus is one of the most remarkable survivors on earth. It is a living fossil and may have lived on earth for about a million years.
The nautilus was born at the end of the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, when various animals began to appear in our planet's oceans.
These soft-bodied cephalopods have experienced good times and bad, including the worst of it, the "era of mass extinction."
At that time, most species on the earth became extinct in a short period of time. Therefore, survivors like the nautilus received great attention from scientists.
Scientists have discovered from newly collected data and photos that both species of nautilus are still surviving.
In southern America, not far from Hawaii, Papua New Guinea is the only sea area in the world where these two species of soft-bodied cephalopods live.
Therefore, it is not impossible for nautilus to appear around Hawaii. Otherwise, Korean peacocks would not be fooled by the submarine guide and come here to look for nautilus.
The travel company hired by Han Peacock was indeed very professional. They had prepared a sufficient number of deep-sea protective suits. It seemed that they definitely brought many people here.
"Finally, let's talk about Nautilus. There are many types of Nautilus, and here, you are very likely to see this ancient giant that survived in the ocean. Do you know what a Big Mac is?
Not the kind of small one with a few centimeters, ten or twenty centimeters, but the kind of giant that is one meter, or even more than one meter, like a stick. Look, you must not know, the Nautilus is not like
Not like shells, but like sticks.”
After everyone was ready to dive, the tour guide brought a tablet and opened some pictures for Han Kongque and others to watch.
"Ah! This is a Nautilus? Can it grow up to one meter four?" Looking at something like a stone pillar, Chen Qing and the others couldn't imagine that this was a Nautilus.
Seeing the shock of Chen Qing and others, the dive guide was very proud. She said happily: "In ancient times, there were thousands of kinds of nautilus, only a few of them were like the contemporary snail-shaped convolutions, and most of them were straight-shelled types.
It is 20-50 centimeters, the larger one is 80-90 centimeters, and the largest fossil previously reported is 140 centimeters."
Han Peacock was also a little surprised. He didn't know that there was a straight-shell type of nautilus. From the picture, this nautilus looked like a fossil. Its shell was in the shape of a sharp and narrow straight long cone, shaped like a horn or a bamboo shoot.
"This is a very rare nautilus fossil, and it comes from China. Your domestic paleontologists often refer to ancient nautilus fossils as 'corner stones'." The potential guide looked at these Chinese with pride. They are the treasures of their own country.
Not as clear as a foreigner like her, right?
"Check the information to see if it is like what this foreign girl said. If the fossils are really from our country, it would be embarrassing for us to be exported abroad." At this time, Chen Qing asked Han Peacock in a low voice.
Han Kongque smiled bitterly, took out his mobile phone, and searched. After such a search, he found that it really came from China and was found in the Yangtze River Basin.
It seems that they are ignorant. Some people seemed to know this in ancient times. For example, Huang Tingjian used this fossil to make a paperweight, and took the nautilus fossil as a bamboo shoot fossil on his own initiative, and wrote a poem: "Nanya
A bride's stone, a thunderbolt presses the bamboo shoots out, a spoonful of water moistens its roots, and you will know when it will become a bamboo."
Nautilus fossils have been found in many places in the Yangtze River Basin. A small number of nautilus fossils have also been found in Jinling, but they are relatively scattered.
The most concentrated place is still in the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River, because cephalopods mainly mate and reproduce in sea areas with higher water temperatures near the equator, and a large number of species have the habit of "migratory".
Those "stragglers" may have died during the "migration" process, and the large number of fossils discovered in the Three Gorges area are all "graves" left by them after they reproduced and died in large numbers.
The Jinling Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has recently collected three large ancient nautilus fossils. The longest one is 162 centimeters. It is these three large ancient nautilus fossils that the submarine guide displays.
The genus of these fossils is called Sinian hornstone, the species name is Sinensis species, and the full name is Sinian hornstone. This is an ancient nautilus fossil unique to my country. It lived in the middle Ordovician period 460 million years ago.
As early as the 1920s, when Li Siguang, a famous Chinese geologist, was inspecting the Three Gorges area, he named the strata producing such fossils "Pagoda Limestone" based on fossils that resembled pagodas or bamboo shoots. This name is very popular in Chinese geology.
It has been widely cited in academic circles.
The Sinian hornstone is a "specialty" of China and a standard fossil in the middle Ordovician period. In other words, as long as this kind of fossil is found, it can be determined that the stratigraphic age in this area belongs to the Middle Ordovician 460 million years ago.
age, and shows that this formation is a marine formation.
From this we can infer that the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River in China was a deep-water area 460 million years ago.
The nautilus first appeared in the late Cambrian period 500 million years ago. After the Ordovician period, it quickly evolved into the most ferocious carnivore in the ocean, and was known as the "King of the Sea" throughout geological history.
To this day, cephalopods similar to the nautilus are still the "overlords" among invertebrates in the sea.
The cephalopods in the modern ocean are king squid and giant octopus. The largest individual can reach 16 to 18 meters. They can hunt all kinds of fish in the sea and can even engage in life-and-death fights with killer whales. Sometimes, a giant octopus can kill
A small boat was tied tightly so that it could not move.
There used to be nearly 3,000 genera and more than 8,000 species of Nautilus, which was a large group of marine animals in the history of the earth. However, there are only one genus and four species of Nautilus left in the world, making it a very rare and precious "living fossil".
"This is an ancient nautilus fossil. Is it still available today?" There are only four species of one genus and four species in existence. Isn't this dive guide really deceiving them?
When the dive guide heard Han Peacock's suspicion, he immediately burst into laughter. After laughing for a while, fearing that Han Peacock and the others would become angry, the dive guide said again: "Of course there is a reason for this. You should be aware that the four species found in one genus
They’re all in the Pacific, and even the Nautilus is in this sea area.”
"What's this? The Pacific Ocean is so big, who knows what species are underwater?" Gu Lie said.
The dive guide nodded and said, "So, if someone hadn't really discovered this strange creature, we wouldn't dare to deceive our customers casually."
"Are you saying that someone has really discovered this kind of conch?" Chen Qing couldn't help but ask.
The dive guide nodded immediately, then she smiled and said: "And it was discovered by a person from your country, in the waters of Nansha."
Han Kongque and the others were speechless again. This man was so embarrassed that their faces turned red and purple.
In fact, it happened by accident, and there is no shame in it even if you don’t know about it.
Ten years ago, a sailor named Zheng Haigen caught a conch with a white shell and orange-red ripples in the waters of Nansha.
When he was overjoyed, he wanted to share the seafood with everyone, but when he scalded it with boiling water, a ball of soft meat suddenly fell out of the conch shell.
So everyone had a delicious meal dipped in condiments. After eating, he was still not satisfied, so he carefully preserved the conch shell, and took it to the Magic City Museum of Natural History and the Magic University of Fisheries to consult experts when visiting relatives.
Looking at this seemingly ordinary conch shell, several marine shellfish research experts were stunned, and their answers also shocked Zheng Haigen.
"This is a nautilus. It is a rare shellfish in the world and a first-level protected animal in my country. So far, no live nautilus has been collected in our country. Therefore, what you eat is not just seafood, but it is worth 100,000 US dollars!"
Whether it is worth 100,000 U.S. dollars, let’s not say for the moment. In terms of the current domestic shell market prices, the price of Nautilus shells is second to none. (To be continued.)