What’s the News: Biologists have discovered an eel so bizarre that they didn’t initially know if it was an eel or some other kind of fish. The strange creature, dubbed Protoanguilla palau after a researcher found it in an undersea cavern off the coast of Palau, has very few of the anatomic features of modern eels, but displays many hallmarks of primitive eels from the Mesozoic era. It appears that the eel’s last common ancestor with any other living creature existed 200 million years ago, the researchers report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

How the Heck:

Last year, Jiro Sakaue of the Southern Marine Laboratory of Palau came across the unique eel while diving in a deep fringing-reef cave near Palau. He brought the find to his colleagues to investigate.
Sakaue and his team began by analyzing the physical features of eight of the eel specimens. The researchers compared the creatures’ anatomic characteristics to those of modern eels—which includes over 800 species grouped into 19 families—and to ancient eel fossils.
The new species, the scientists found, showed traits present only in the fossils of the earliest eels, dating back to 100 million years ago. ...