New Scientist

Image: Linda Invany

An ancient squid-like animal with a shell that looked like a 1.5-metre-long paperclip may have typically lived for 200 years.

Diplomoceras maximum lived about 68 million years ago, making it a contemporary of Tyrannosaurus rex. It was an ammonite – a now-extinct group of tentacled cephalopods – and it had a distinctive paperclip-shaped shell.

“It’s hard not to be entranced,” says Linda Ivany at Syracuse University, New York. “It’s as tall as I am.” Read more on newscientist.com…