WYOTEUTHIS: THE CHUNKY BELEMNITE FROM THE JURASSIC SEA

Wyoteuthis linsterorum, holotype

Some fossils make you pause because they are beautiful. Others catch your eye because something about them simply does not fit.

Two unusually stout fossils from Wyoming have done just that, revealing a newly named marine animal with a wonderfully distinctive shape—and an unexpected place in the history of ancient oceans.

Meet Wyoteuthis linsterorum, a squid-like cephalopod that lived around 160 million years ago. Its scientific description was published in September 2026, giving a name to a creature whose story had been waiting decades to unfold.

A belemnite with a little extra roundness

If you have collected belemnites, you may know their smooth, pointed guards: the solid internal structures that often survive after the softer parts of these marine animals have disappeared.

Wyoteuthis takes that familiar form in an unusual direction. Its guard is remarkably broad, reaching about six centimetres across. The researchers describe these as the thickest belemnite guards yet known.

Wyoteuthis linsterorum

That makes it a wonderfully chunky fossil, though a thick guard does not automatically tell us how large—or how round—the living animal was. Reconstructing its soft body remains a more uncertain undertaking.

An ancient family with a late-surviving branch

The surprise goes beyond its proportions.

The fossils belong to the Megateuthididae, a belemnite family that flourished earlier in the Jurassic but had largely disappeared before Wyoteuthis lived.

These specimens reveal a surviving branch of that family in the northeastern Pacific region. 

Their discovery adds a small but significant piece to our understanding of where ancient marine lineages persisted.

There is something deeply pleasing about that. A fossil can be both a physical object you hold in your hand and evidence that changes the shape of a much larger story.

Two finds, decades of curiosity

The first specimen was found in the late 1990s by Dr Burkhard Pohl. A second, discovered by fossil collector Cliff Linster, was donated to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in 2019.

Together, they helped researchers recognise a new species. The name linsterorum honours Cliff and his family. Cliff died in June 2026, before the research was published.

The study brought together Alexey Ippolitov, Jessica Lippincott, William Wahl and Dean Lomax. Both fossils are reported on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis.

For those of us who love looking closely at fossils, this is a lovely reminder to stay curious about the familiar. An odd shape deserves a second look. So does the specimen that refuses to fit neatly beside its neighbours.

Sometimes, a new chapter in the history of life begins with someone noticing that one fossil looks a little different.

Suggested image caption

The unusually stout guard of Wyoteuthis linsterorum, a newly described Jurassic belemnite from Wyoming. Image: Ippolitov, Lippincott, Wahl & Lomax (2026), Figure 5, Papers in Palaeontology. Source, CC BY.

Further reading

Ippolitov, A. P., Lippincott, J. L., Wahl, W. R. & Lomax, D. R. (2026). ‘The big chunky belemnite’: a new relict megateuthidid from the Oxfordian (Late Jurassic) of Wyoming, USA, and its place in the evolutionary history of the group. Papers in Palaeontology, 12, e70123.

Figure 5: Wyoteuthis linsterorum, holotype specimen. Image: Ippolitov, Lippincott, Wahl & Lomax (2026), Figure 5, Papers in Palaeontology. Source, CC BY. The holotype—the specimen used to name the species—with photographs and CT sections.

Figure 6: Wyoteuthis linsterorum gen. et sp. nov., paratype, WDC JSI-22.  The second specimen, showing its chunky shape and internal anatomy.