This is a post about worm holes. Not the physics kind, but the kind an unknown predator bored into the tubes of fossil annelids.

For the most part, worms were not the best candidates for entry into the fossil record. Many were just too damn squishy. Such soft invertebrates had to be buried in circumstances of high-fidelity preservation to fossilize. Yet there are some important exceptions. Some worms surrounded themselves with more durable hard parts which stood a better chance of surviving in stone. The armored machaerid worms of the Paleozoic are one example, but paleontologists also know a bit about tube-dwelling worms thanks to the homes some prehistoric polychaetes left behind. And, as researchers Jordi Martinell,