Whale-bone-eating worms that lack guts and rely on bacterial symbionts to eat may have been as widespread millions of years ago as they are today. Nicholas Higgs at the University of Leeds, UK, and his team report that a 3-million-year-old fossil from Italy, thought to be a beaked whale, contains bore-holes left by a type of annelid worm.
The authors compared holes in the Italian fossil to those made by modern Osedax worms (pictured) in several whale bones. They found that the holes bore distinguishing characteristics of Osedax-made canals. This is the second Osedax-eaten whale fossil to be identified — it follows a 30-million-year-old fossil from the northwestern United States — and the first discovery of Osedax in the Mediterranean, past or present, the authors say.
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Ancient whales were worm food. Nature 479, 153 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/479153b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/479153b
