A vampire squid from the Carboniferous

, writing in magazine in 2010, described Goldman Sachs, an American bank, as a “vampire squid”, he traduced an innocent animal. Vampire squid are not vampires. They actually feed on detritus, rather than living prey. They are not squid, either. They are more closely related to octopuses, on the road to which they seem to be an evolutionary staging post.Real squid belong to a group of cephalopods (as tentacled, swimming molluscs are known) called the Decabrachia (ten-arms). Vampire squid and octopus belong to another, the Vampyropoda (vampire-feet). Unlike octopuses, however, vampire squid (of which only one species, , survives today) have ten limbs rather than eight—though they do not have the torpedo-shaped bodies of real squid. That, plus evidence from the fossil record, confirms the idea that the groups’ common ancestor was squid-like. But when this common ancestor lived remains a mystery.