Swordsquid

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Winter Bones

We found fossils! Well, it was really sea life preserved in ice, which is better than fossils anyway, right? I went out with Yuzo and Os to fix their auger, and when we tested it out on a random piece of snow, it coughed up some alien fish for us. The rest of our day became an excavation, and we found so many things, we almost forgot to go home. Ooh, Alex is going to wet his pants over these, then he’ll write a novel about each one.

- Grant Irwin (Odyssey II)

The remains date back to the star’s last major flare, detected from Earth in 1998. I’ve always suspected that extinction events should follow solar flares, but this is our first hard evidence of such an occurrence.

- Yuzo Yamamoto

Taxa Notes – Swordsquid

Here is one more species we can add to the mysterious phylum Erosiensizoa. Like the devil’s sharpshooter and the archersnake, the only other known members of this clade, the swordsquid feeds on liquids through a syringe-like mouthpiece. They are blood parasites, not predators like their cousins. While the leech-like spoonworms are specialized to clamp onto the respiratory spiracles of aquatic organisms, swordsquids will attack any part of the body. The microscopic stingers protruding from the venom sacs prevent easy removal.

Several specimens, none more than a few centimeters in length, were found embedded in some of the exceptionally preserved sea life our geology team exposed. Not too long after, our marine biologists dredged up a bounty of live sea animals and weeds. They kept a few alive in jars, allowing us to observe the bloodsuckers in action.
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Ballpoint pen