Japan Team Finds Ancient Ocean Full of Squids

   Tokyo, July 14 (Jiji Press)--The ancient ocean was full of squids, whose population exceeded that of fish or ammonites, a Japanese research team has found through a new method using digital technology.
   The team of researchers mainly from Hokkaido University discovered a large number of squid fossils from rocks of the late Cretaceous period about 70 million to 100 million years ago using a new technique called digital fossil-mining for photographing the inside of rocks in circular slices.
   Using this technique, the team examined rocks from the late Cretaceous strata in Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, comparing fossils of squids with those of fish and ammonites from the same period and estimating their populations.
   It found that more squids lived in the Cretaceous period ocean than fish and ammonites, which are known to have flourished then.
   Few fossils of squids with little hard tissue had been found, and the process of their evolution and success was unknown. This reflected the previous difficulty of extracting fossils of squid species, because they are small and fragile, although they may leave hard beaks.

(2025/07/14-17:19)