Ancient octopus figures include 330 million years, 10 legs, two spellings

It's almost like everything you've been told about octopi is a lie.

Eight legs? Not always. Found in the ocean? Not necessarily. That octopi is the plural of octopus? Not always.

For some of those findings, we can thank scientists, who recently published a report about a 330-million-year-old fossil of an octopus in Montana.

Yes. Three-hundred-thirty million years.

Yes. Montana.

Even stranger than its age is this: the old octopus had 10 limbs, which really qualifies it as a decapus if my memory of prefixes is correct.

Even stranger, the scientists say that each of the 10 limbs had two suckers, giving it 20 total.

So if you're keeping track, this is the oldest fossil found since the Tampa Bay Bucs signed Tom Brady. It's the most suckers in one place since the last cryptocurrency convention.

I jest. Maybe.

Anyway, scientists say the octopus in question lived millions of years before what they previously believed was the oldest octopus – making it kind of the Dick Clark of octopus, to use a 40-year-old joke. While the scientists used some fancy science wizardry to determine the octopus' age (not counting rings, I hope), they were also tipped off to the fact that it was really old when it started complaining about modern music and telling stories about when it cost just a quarter to go to the movies during the Great Depression.

Of course, all of this could have been discovered three decades ago, when the fossil was only 229,999,970 years old. The specimen was discovered in the Bear Gulch limestone formation in Montana and was one of several octopi (more on that word later) donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada in 1988, when the octopus' childhood friend Ronald Reagan was president.

It sat there for years, forgotten and presumably offended that it was called an octopus, despite having 10 limbs.

Then . . . years later . . . scientists noticed the 10 little limbs, encased in limestone.

What's more, the fossilized octopus had the remnants of an ink bag, used presumably to squirt at predators and to sign ancient octopus documents with a quill.

According to an article by The Associated Press, "The creature, a vampyropod, was likely the ancestor of both modern octopuses and vampire squid ..."

There was more information, but I like the idea of ending a sentence with the words "vampire squid," which will haunt your dreams. The AP article also quoted the journal Nature Communications as saying "the 'oldest known definitive' vampyropod was from around 240 million years ago."

That means the Montana octopus (perhaps the first time those words have ever appeared consecutively in print) was around 90 million years before the birth of what was formerly presumed to be the first octopus.

While doing my research (reading the article, using a calculator to subtract 30 from 3 million, thinking of dumb jokes about old things), I also discovered that octopi isn't the only plural for octopus. Many sources say the correct word is octopuses, although Merriam-Webster Dictionary says either one is fine.

So here's what we've learned today:

• Millions of years ago, octopuses had 10 limbs.
• Ronald Reagan was childhood friends with an octopus.
• Octopi and octopuses are both right.
• There's such a thing as a vampire squid.

Good luck thinking about that tonight when you turn out the lights.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.