A eccentric sea creature whose fossils look like a hybridizing between a leaf and a fingerprint may be Earth ’s onetime known beast , dating back 558 million twelvemonth .
AsNew Scientistreports , researchers from the Australian National University ( ANU ) made a rosy find in a distant region of Russia : aDickinsoniafossil with fat particle still confiscate . These odd , oval - shaped creatures were gentle - bodied , had rib complex body part running down their incline , and raise about 4.5 invertebrate foot long . They were as “ strange as life on another planet , ” researchers wrote in theabstractof a new paper published in the journalScience .
AlthoughDickinsoniafossils were first discovered in South Australia in 1946 , researchers lack the organic matter take to classify this creature . " Scientists have been struggle for more than 75 years over whatDickinsoniaand other freakish fossil of the Edicaran biology were : jumbo individual - celled amoeba , lichen , bomb experiment of phylogenesis , or the earliest fauna on Earth , ” senior author Jochen Brocks , an associate professor at ANU , said in astatement .
With the find of cholesterol molecule — which are found in almost all animals , but not in other organism like bacteria and amoebas — scientist can say thatDickinsoniawere animals . The creatures swam the sea during the Ediacaran Period , 635 million to 542 million age ago . More complex organisms like mollusks , worms , and parazoan did n’t emerge until 20 million years later .
The dodo with fat molecules was found on cliffs near the White Sea in an sphere of northwestern Russia that was so remote that research worker had to take a chopper to get there . gather up the sample was a decease - defy feat , too .
“ I had to fall over the bound of a cliff on Mexican valium and dig out huge blocks of sandstone , befuddle them down , wash the sandstone , and repeat this summons until I found the fossil I was after , ” lead author Ilya Bobrovskiy of ANU said . consider that this breakthrough could change our intellect of Earth ’s earliest life sentence bod , it seems the risk was deserving it .
[ h / tNew Scientist ]
