and another perspectivespost comes.... this one got out so quick because i accidentally drew these two out of order and wanted to release them in order
"Oh, Worm!" Climacograptus, Normalograptus, Diplograptus, Dictyonema, Ptilograptus, Dendrograptus Ordovician, 450 million years ago, Ktaoua Formation (Morocco) So, fun fact: Graptolites live. Rhabdopleura is quite possibly a surviving graptolite species! Wild! Hang in there, little guy. Anyways, this means that everything I learned about graptolites as a little kid was horribly wrong. See, a lot of people reconstructed Diplograptus like this:
This was well into my childhood - note the CGI - and even modern paleoartists still fall for this trap! However, that's mostly a copy from some old reconstructions from the early 1800s, as far as I can tell. This is because we used to think Diplograptus was like a jellyfish or a hydrozoan, and from there I guess it became a paleoart meme as such depictions were uncritically copied. But now that we have knowledge of Rhabdopleura being a graptolite, we can realize that they were actually colonies of worms, with no evidence of siphonophore-ish floatation devices, and hence may have actively swum! Plankton they are not! (probably) - nature is a strange, strange thing. This is an entry in my Perspectives series! Check out #perspectives on my blog for more.
