Three-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals 'Zombie' Worm

With the discovery of a 3-million-year-old whale fossil, researchers also made an interesting discovery that left them puzzled. They say that the animal appears to have been plagued by a zombie worm that ate its bones. The discovery was made in Tuscany, Italy.

The worm belongs to the genus Osedax, which was previously through to be confined only to some parts of the world. The new study suggest that the creature was in fact extremely widespread throughout every ocean more than 6 million years ago.

“Finding out that Osedax were feeding on this whale bone three million years ago tell us that their ancestors must have also been living in the Atlantic as well, because the Mediterranean was re-colonized 5.5 million years ago from the Atlantic,” says Nicholas Higgs.

The expert, who is based at the University of Leeds and the Natural History Museum, was the lead scientist on the new study. Details of the work appear in the latest issue of the journal Historical Biology.