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Peter Ward dives to meet a wild Nautilus

Mark Frauenfelder at 10:15 am Wed, Jul 30, 2008

Kindle

Avi Solomon says: "Peter Ward, paleontologist, dives at night to meet the Nautilus, a wondrous creature which has survived for 500 million years."

Peter Ward dives to meet a wild Nautilus

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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travelina

Great video, thanks!
RJ

Yes, but how do they taste?
membrain

Wonderful! Thanks!
Jardine

You’d think that after living for 500 million years, he’d get kind of bored.
Justin Ried

And the nautilus said “lol, n00b…”
Pipenta

Oh, I am so jealous. This is a lifelong dream of mine, to see a nautilus in the wild. What a wonderful experience it must have been. I’m so glad we get a little taste of it from the video.

Did you notice that one of them seemed to have two or three parasites riding on the outside of its shel? Crustaceans of some sort is what they looked like. If I had been diving with them, I would have been very tempted to play cleaning goby/shrimp and to have picked the parasite off. Of course the parasite might well have been very specific to the nautilus, and with a lineage every bit as ancient.