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by marcandre 1034 days ago
Very interesting. I don't understand why it mentions this to be a brand new discovery, since the presence of opsins in the skin of animals for mimetism has been known for some time, e.g. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/octopuses... (2015)
2 comments

Article says it's the first case of opsins found in the skin of a vertebrate.
It seems that the article you reference is more speculating but the article posted is much further along with some results.
I believe there is some more recent work on this, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4448664/ """LACE (light-activated chromophore expansion) in isolated preparations suggests that octopus skin is intrinsically light sensitive and that this dispersed light sense might contribute to their unique and novel patterning abilities. Finally, our data suggest that a common molecular mechanism for light detection in eyes may have been co-opted for light sensing in octopus skin and then used for LACE."""

another, more recent paper, which is more of a review: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(22)00659...

The discovery in the OP is of dermal photoreception in a vertabrate.
...plus it covers a whole different type of animal (cephalopod vs. fish)