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Chambered Nautilus — printable fact sheet
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Chambered Nautilus
Nautilus pompilius
The nautilus is the last of its kind. Its lineage goes back some five hundred million years, and where every other surviving cephalopod — octopus, squid, cuttlefish — abandoned the external shell, the nautilus kept it. That shell is a buoyancy device. It is divided into sealed c…
Did you know?
- The chambered nautilus is so ancient that it has survived relatively unchanged for over 500 million years, making it a true 'living fossil.'
- Its lineage is around 500 million years old, and it is the only cephalopod that kept an external shell. The shell is a buoyancy tank of sealed chambers, letting it hover weightlessly by adjusting the gas inside. Its eye is an open pinhole — no lens, no cornea, flooded with seawater — while its octopus cousins evolved eyes as good as ours. It has up to ninety tentacles, none of which have suckers.
What I learned
Draw the chambered nautilus
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