"When people imagine worms, they often picture everyday earthworms, but ribbon worms wriggle on a distant evolutionary branch and mostly burrow in seafloors or rocky shores. Most of the roughly 1,300 species of ribbon worms are just a few millimeters wide and can be quite longone species, Lineus longissimus, can measure up to 55 meters, or twice the average length of a blue whale. They're basically these long, pretty flat, ribbon-shaped worms, Allen says. They're really voracious predators in the marine system."
"Baseodiscus the Eldest, or B, as it is called for short, was fished from the wild between 1996 and 1998 and kept in a tank at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It came into Allen's possession when the building it was kept at was renovated. When Allen showed B to his class in 2023, then undergraduate student Chloe Goodsell was surprised."
Ribbon worms comprise roughly 1,300 species that burrow in seafloors or rocky shores and range from a few millimeters wide to exceptionally long bodies. One species, Lineus longissimus, can reach up to 55 meters. Baseodiscus the Eldest (B) was collected from the wild between 1996 and 1998 and housed in a university tank before changing possession during a renovation. A student discovered B in 2023 while caring for other tank animals and inquired about its age. Researchers estimated B's minimum age at 27 years, establishing a new record for ribbon-worm longevity.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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