The Lamprey Was Just as Disgusting in Devonian Period

By Alicia Dorr in News on Oct 26, 2006 6:57PM

A University of Chicago scientist and his colleague found a 360 million-year-old lamprey fossil in Grahamtown, South Africa. The fossil was found in South Africa's version of the Green River Formation in Wyoming, an "unusually productive" site.

It's even more unusual that they found the lamprey fossil, which is older than the last lamprey fossil by 35 million years. The parasite fish, which still suck the life out of other animals (and scare the living crap out of humans) today, have no bony skeleton or substantial cartilage, which means there are few impressions left of their delicate bodies. The fish apparently haven't evolved much since they first showed their creepy, jawless faces on the planet eons ago.

That's the thing we don't find surprising. Just the description of the things, with their sucker mouths, filled with rows of teeth and a "pistonlike tongue than can rasp into the body wall of their prey" -- yikes. As sick as the idea of these fish make us, we look at them like we do leeches. Why would evolution fix something that's not broken? There's always going to be some stupid fish or mammal floating by that the sock puppet-looking parasite can stick its round mouth on, so there it is.

In a way, that's what makes these scientist's discovery even cooler -- these fish have been rocking out in the ocean (and in fresh water, incidentally) sucking all the body fluids out of other life for pretty much ever. We tip our hats to the little buggers ... but that doesn't mean if we see one we won't run screaming away like schoolgirls.

Image via PBS.org.