Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
these others for many reasons. The other two discoveries occurred by sheer
chance; Saunders's discovery was a triumph of ingenuity and intellectual
sleuthing.
Saunders at least had the benefit of knowing that his animal existed.
But his rapid discovery first of its habitat site and then of the living animal
itself, was extraordinary. Arthur Willey searched for this animal for two years
and never found it. Within a week of arriving in New Guinea in 1983, Saun-
ders had captured this prized creature. And what a creature it was.
The shelled cephalopod that Saunders captured in the deep blue sea off
Manus Island, had a completely unexpected appearance, for it looked almost
nothing like the nautiluses we had grown so familiar with. And it was not
alone, for Saunders began catching both
Nautilus pompilius
and the "King
Nautilus" at the same locality. Saunders discovered not only that two com-
pletely different types of nautiloids lived on earth but also that they lived
side by side in the same habitat.
I was able to see these extraordinary creatures in June of 1984 when I
traveled to New Guinea with Bruce Saunders. Were able to catch more of
these odd nautiloids. Their shells were quadrate, with weak yellow stripes,
and the soft parts looked quite unlike those of a nautilus, for the upper body
was covered with thick, fleshy tubercles that are lacking in all other
Nautilus
species. But the most striking feature was the shell's cover. A thick, shaggy,
orange fur covered the shell, almost completely obscuring the shell orna-
ment and making the creature look like it wore a fur coat. Thus was my first
view of
Nautilus scrobiculatus,
also known as the King Nautilus.
Over time we trapped more of them and then released them back into
the sea to swim with them. They looked and
behaved
unlike any of the other
Nautilus
species we were familiar with. Their shells also bore an uncanny re-
semblance to one of the most ancient (and the most common) of Mesozoic
nautiloids, a genus named
Cenoceras.
A heretical thought crept in to our dis-
cussions: Could this living animal, for almost two centuries placed in the
genus
Nautilus,
actually belong to a new genus? Or (an even more exciting
prospect), could it be an undiscovered living fossil that had existed on earth,
without leaving any fossil trace, since the Jurassic Period? This question
