Fossilised Cthonian??

[The Dozing Dragon]

Linky

[Cherno]

Nonsense, it's a Space Jockey pet!

[Diceplague]

The radial symmetry is very Lovecraftian... but so is my mother-in-law with her tentacles and non-euclidean geometry! 

[cuchulain23]

That is a weird fossil for certain. Definitely looks Lovecraftian to me as well.

[pocoloco]

I'm very happy that some 300 million years separate me from that thing 

[tnjrp]

You can only remain happy as long as you don't read the comments on that news item

Anyhow, I'm not quite up to buying that this is the ancient fossil that inspired the xeno in alien or even the facehugger. The article is scant on presenting evidence for the claim, except for stating that "Giger's [...] many designs [...] are said to have been based on the fossils". Presumably some specific set of fossils including this one.

It's a fine piece still of course.

[Cherno]

I read quite a lot about Giger, but this article was the first time that mentioned fossils influencing him in his design, so I have my doubts.

[Verderer]

An Elder Thing and not Chtonian, surely?

[Connectamabob]

The design process of the facehugger is actually well documented, had this "journalist" been bothered to actually check.

The facehugger was actually designed by Ron Cobb, not Geiger. Geiger did do a series of concept iterations for it, but Cobb did the design that actually made it on screen. The original description was created by Dan O'Bannon, and was very vague. He basically just told the art department it should look like an octopus. Geiger started out with a concept that looked like a giant abalone with a tail, and later added thin spider legs to it. Then he chucked out that concept in favor of one inspired by two hands conjoined joined at the sides (the fingers all went straight up and gripped the skull over the top, rather than splayed to grip all around like in the films). Ron Cobb then took that basic idea and went off and drew up his own take on it, which became the design seen on screen.

[redshadows]

The design process of the facehugger is actually well documented, had this "journalist" been bothered to actually check.

Its the Daily mail newspaper, they make stuff up every day   

[Legion1963]

It looks like a piece of gingerroot left out in the freezing winter cold. 

[No Such Agency]

I'm very happy that some 300 million years separate me from that thing 

Don't get your jimmies too rustled, they're only about the size of your hand.  Took a while for anything too big to show up in the primordial seas.  When they did... yeah, giant carnivorous armored fish.  The Lovecrafian inverts never had a chance.

[P_Clapham]

I was thinking Elder Thing myself.

An Elder Thing and not Chtonian, surely?

[tnjrp]

Fossilized Cthulhu miniature
http://io9.com/5987449/ancient-fossil-reveals-that-cthulhu-really-did-live-on-earth-500000-million-years-ago

[LaserCutCard]

Pah... Helicoprion would eat it for breakfast

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2013/02/27/prehistoric-ghost-shark-helicoprions-spiral-toothed-jaw-explained/