QUEZON CITY, July 24 (PIA) -- Researchers from the Geology and Paleontology Division of the National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) and Nannoworks Laboratory of the National Institute of Geological Sciences of the University of the Philippines-Diliman published their discovery of the oldest Nautilus fossils from Lian, Batangas.

Nautilus sp. is the common name of marine species from the family of octopi, squid, and cuttlefish, which existed some 500 million years ago.

This groundbreaking discovery is now available online at the Philippine Journal of Science September 2020 issue, where researchers narrate how they discovered the rare occurrence of two nautilus fossils during their geologic fieldwork back in 2012 and 2018 at Talim Point, Brgy. Matabungkay, Batangas.

"The specimens were found in a fine- to medium-grained sandstone unit and observed to be associated with other macrofossils such as corals, gastropods, bivalves, brachiopods, and echinoids," the researchers said in the published paper.

Prior to the discovery of the Batangas fossils, the only records of chambered Nautilus fossils in the country were from the early Pleistocene rock units in Pangasinan and from the Holocene uplifted reefal sediment of Leyte (Wani et al, 2008).

Believed to be a relic of ancient times, "this new discovery of Nautilus specimens from the Neogene deposits in Batangas is important in understanding the evolutionary history of this genus. It was previously believed that nautilids do not have any fossil record during the Pliocene and Pleistocene (Kummel 1956). The fossils discovered in Batangas so far represent the oldest fossil Nautilus in the Philippines and the only late Miocene to the early Pliocene record of Nautilus in the world that now stored at the Nannoworks Laboratory of the National Institute of Geological Sciences, College of Science, University of the Philippines," the study said.

The full paper is available online in the Philippine Journal of Science website: http://philjournalsci.dost.gov.ph/publication/regular-issues/next-issue/98-vol-149-no-3-september-2020/1202-rare-occurrence-of-nautilus-sp-fossils-from-batangas-philippines (TNN/PIA-IDPD)