They don't look to be quite the same tho do they?
The trace fossil:
Photo of ocean floor from P. A. Rona, 1978, “A benthic
invertebrate from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” Bulletin of Marine Science, 28(2):371–375.
and now the observed print on the ocean floor near the smokers:
Photo courtesy The Stephen Low
Company
Now, they are saying that the photo would be holes left above where the trace fossil (the hexagons) would be. I think that that would make this a
rather unusual organism, sort of like a coral that instead of building corals around it sits in the mud. I wonder if it does make more sense then
that these hexagonal shapes are preserved, whereas the top holes apparently aren't, because the holes are just mud and the hexagons are an actual
organism that can sit there and get fossilized. Of course, burrows can get fossilized on their own too.
It really is amazing what they've been finding at the deep ocean vents. THe implications for abiogenesis experiments themselves have been
astounding, let alone the bizzare menagerie of creatures down there.