page_title: Vampire squid
section_title: Relationships
hierarchical_section_title: Vampire squid / Relationships
caption_attribution_description: English: Vampyronassa rhodanica (extinct vampire squid) pyritized fossil from the Callovian (middle Jurassic) Voulte-sur-Rhône or Voulte sur Rhône in France. It also features a shrimp behind it (possibly Aeger brevirostris) and the bivalve Bositra buchii above.
context_page_description: The vampire squid is a small cephalopod found throughout temperate and tropical oceans in extreme deep sea conditions. Unique retractile sensory filaments justify the vampire squid's placement in its own order, Vampyromorphida, as it shares similarities with both octopuses and squid, but is now known to be more closely related to octopuses. As a phylogenetic relict, it is the only known surviving member of its order. The first specimens were collected on the Valdivia Expedition and they were originally described as an octopus in 1903 by German teuthologist Carl Chun, but later assigned to a new order together with several extinct taxa.
context_section_description: The Vampyromorphida is the sister taxon to all other octopuses. Phylogenetic studies of cephalopods using multiple genes and mitochondrial genomes have shown that the Vampyromorphida are the first group of octopuses to evolutionarily diverge from all other octopuses. The Vampyromorphida is characterized by derived characters such as the possession of photophores and of two velar filaments which are most probably modified arms. It also shares the inclusion of an internal gladius with other coleoids, including squid, and eight webbed arms with cirrate octopods.
  Vampyroteuthis shares its eight cirrate arms with the Cirrata, in which lateral cirri, or filaments, alternate with the suckers. Vampyroteuthis differs in that suckers are present only on the distal half of the arms while cirri run the entire length. In cirrate octopods suckers and cirri run and alternate on the entire length. Also, a close relationship between Vampyroteuthis and the Jurassic-Cretaceous Loligosepiina is indicated by the similarity of their gladiuses, the internal stiffening structure. However, the inclusion of Vampyronassa rhodanica from the middle Jurassic La Voulte-sur-Rhône of France as a vampyroteuthid turns out to be rather doubtful.
  The supposed vampyromorphids from the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian (156–146 mya) of Solnhofen, Plesioteuthis prisca, Leptoteuthis gigas, and Trachyteuthis hastiformis, cannot be positively assigned to this group; they are large species (from 35 cm in P. prisca to > 1 m in L. gigas) and show features not found in vampyromorphids, being somewhat similar to the true squids, Teuthida.
caption: Pyritized fossil of Vampyronassa rhodanica from the Lower Callovian of La Voulte-sur-Rhône.
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