The type specimen that George Willett used to originally describe the species. Credit: Valentich-Scott et al
. A small clam, previously only understood from fossil records, has actually been discovered alive in the tidepools of Santa Barbara by scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
The discovery of a new types is constantly exciting, but it can be a lot more so when a species believed to be extinct is found alive. Scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History have made just such a discovery at Naples Point, where they found a small clam that had actually formerly just been understood from fossil records. The researchers findings have just recently been published in the journal Zookeys.
” Its not all that common to find alive a species first understood from the fossil record, specifically in an area as well-studied as Southern California,” said co-author Jeff Goddard, a research associate at UC Santa Barbaras Marine Science Institute. “Ours doesnt return anywhere near as far as the popular Coelacanth or the deep-water mollusk Neopilina galatheae– representing an entire class of animals thought to have disappeared 400 million years back– but it does go back to the time of all those marvelous animals caught by the La Brea Tar Pits.”
In November 2018, throughout a low tide at Naples Point, Goddard was looking for nudibranch sea slugs when he discovered a set of small, clear bivalves. The shells of these bivalves were only 10 millimeters long, however when they extended and began waving a brilliant white-striped foot that was longer than their shell, Goddard recognized that he had never ever seen this species before.
A stunning play of colors highlights Southern Californias long-lost clam. Credit: Jeff Goddard.
With quality images in hand, Goddard decided not to collect the animals, which appeared to be uncommon. After pinning down their taxonomic household, he sent out the images to Paul Valentich-Scott, curator emeritus of malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. “I was surprised and captivated,” Valentich-Scott remembered. “I understand this family of bivalves (Galeommatidae) effectively along the coast of the Americas. This was something I d never seen prior to.”
He mentioned a few possibilities to Goddard, however stated he d require to see the animal in-person to make a proper assessment. So, Goddard returned to Naples Point to claim his clam. After 2 hours combing just a couple of square meters, he still had not captured sight of his prize. The types would continue to avoid him a lot more times.
9 trips later, in March 2019, and nearly all set to offer up for great, Goddard turned over yet another rock and saw the needle in the haystack: A single specimen, next to a number of little white nudibranchs and a big chiton. Valentich-Scott would get his specimen at last, and the pair might lastly set to deal with recognition.
It takes a keen eye to identify the minuscule clam (bottom center), sitting next to this chiton in the tidepools of Naples Point. Credit: Jeff Goddard
Valentich-Scott was even more stunned once he got his hands on the shell. He knew it belonged to a genus with one member in the Santa Barbara area, however this shell didnt match any of them. It raised the interesting possibility that they had actually found a new species.
” This really begun the hunt for me,” Valentich-Scott said. “When I suspect something is a new species, I need to track back through all of the clinical literature from 1758 to today. It can be a complicated job, but with experience it can go quite quickly.”
The 2 researchers chose to have a look at an appealing recommendation to a fossil types. They tracked down illustrations of the bivalve Bornia cooki from the paper explaining the species in 1937. It appeared to match the modern specimen. If verified, this would suggest that Goddard had actually discovered not a new species, however a sort of living fossil.
It deserves noting that the scientist who described the species, George Willett, estimated he had excavated and examined maybe 1 million fossil specimens from the same place, the Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles. That stated, he never found B. cooki himself. Rather, he called it after Edna Cook, a Baldwin Hills collector who had found the just two specimens known.
Valentich-Scott requested Willetts original specimen (now categorized as Cymatioa cooki) from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This things, called the “type specimen,” serves to specify the species, so its the supreme arbiter of the clams recognition.
On the other hand, Goddard found another specimen at Naples Point– a single empty shell in the sand beneath a boulder. After thoroughly comparing the specimens from Naples Point with Willetts fossil, Valentich-Scott concluded they were the same species. “It was quite impressive,” he remembered.
Small size and puzzling environment regardless of, all of this asks the question of how the clam avoided detection for so long. “There is such a long history of shell-collecting and malacology in Southern California– including folks thinking about the harder to discover micro-mollusks– that its tough to believe nobody found even the shells of our little cutie,” Goddard said.
He believes the clams may have arrived here on currents as planktonic larvae, carried up from the south during marine heatwaves from 2014 through 2016. These allowed numerous marine types to extend their distributions northward, including numerous recorded specifically at Naples Point. Depending upon the animals growth rate and longevity, this might discuss why nobody had actually noticed C. cooki at the site prior to 2018, consisting of Goddard, who has actually worked on nudibranchs at Naples Point since 2002.
” The Pacific coast of Baja California has broad intertidal boulder fields that extend literally for miles,” Goddard said, “and I presume that down there Cymatioa cooki is probably living in close association with animals burrowing underneath those boulders.
Referral: “A fossil species found living off southern California, with notes on the genus Cymatioa (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Galeommatoidea)” by Paul Valentich-Scott and Jeffrey H. R. Goddard, 7 November 2022, ZooKeys.DOI: 10.3897/ zookeys.1128.95139.
The discovery of a new species is constantly exciting, however it can be even more so when a species thought to be extinct is discovered alive. The shells of these bivalves were only 10 millimeters long, however when they extended and started waving an intense white-striped foot that was longer than their shell, Goddard understood that he had never seen this types prior to. If confirmed, this would imply that Goddard had found not a brand-new species, however a sort of living fossil.
It is worth keeping in mind that the researcher who described the species, George Willett, approximated he had excavated and taken a look at perhaps 1 million fossil specimens from the very same area, the Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles. After carefully comparing the specimens from Naples Point with Willetts fossil, Valentich-Scott concluded they were the very same types.
