Rare, Hairy Nautilus spotted for the first time in 30 years

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/rare-hairy-nautilus-spotted-first-time-30-years

Distant relatives of squid and cuttlefish, nautiluses are an ancient lineage often nicknamed “living fossils” because their shells have appeared in the archaeological record for over 500 million years. They’ve survived two of the planet’s largest mass extinctions. This summer, researchers have spotted a rare nautilus called Allonautilus scrobiculatus for the first time in three decades. Until now, only two people have ever laid eyes on it.

Allonautilus was first discovered in 1984 off of Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea by Bruce Saunders of Bryn Mawr College. He and the University of Washington’s Peter Ward collected several specimens and found they were from a new species based on their gills, jaws, shell shape, and male reproductive structures. The animal was spotted once more in the wild in 1986, and then not seen again until July of this year when Ward returned to the South Pacific to survey nautilus populations.

Because nautiluses are scavengers, his team set up bait-on-a-stick systems every evening – fish and chicken meat were suspended on a pole between 150 and 400 meters (500 and 1,300 feet) below the surface, then the surroundings were filmed for 12 hours. “There were about 30 guys involved and each day we would all watch the movies from the night before at 8X speed. There were a lot of ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs,’” Ward said in a statement.