In the midst of thousands of impressions, an unusual imprint of a tubular exoskeleton with waving tentacles baffled experts. Bearing a striking resemblance to modern corals, jellyfish, and sediments that put the fossils roughly 20 million years before Cnidaria were believed to exist.
Unearthing the Oldest Animal Predator
In a statement, Frankie Dunn, a paleontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the study's first author, says that the imprints aren't like anything they have found from the time period.
He adds that most fossils from this time have extinct body plants, and it isn't clear how they relate to the modern animals we have today. The imprint has a skeleton with densely packed tentacles that waved around in the water, capturing passing prey, similar to sea anemones, jellyfish, and corals we have today.
The discovery was first made in 2007 when a team of researchers from the British Geological Society removed a slab of rock at the Bradgate formation in Charnwood Forest, an infamous fossil site outside Leicester.
The rock, regarded as truly ancient, dates back roughly 557 to 562 million. It was a time when truly odd creatures existed before the biodiversity of the Cambrian Explosion.
In the study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, titled "A crown-group cnidarian from the Ediacaran of Charnwood Forest, UK," researchers took a cast of the textured rock. Amidst the thousands of impressions that depicted a wide range of ancient life forms, one looked less alien than the rest. In fact, it was too similar to what we see today.
Resembling modern coral, the 20-centimeter-long cnidarian is believed to represent the earliest example of a predator.
Dun explains that the Cambrian Explosion was a remarkable time when the anatomy of living animal groups was fixed for over half a billion years. On the other hand, the recent discovery suggests that the body plan of cnidarians was fixed no less than 20 million years prior, raising an exciting question.
Unraveling the Truth Behind the Earth's Earliest Predator
The Ediacaran Period is known for its sparse and strange fossils that share no resemblance to any of the living creatures today. The discovery supports the theory that during this time period, modern animals also dawned. The seeds of at least one animal group we can see today are planted way back; it is time to flourish and diversify during the Cambrian age.
Hence, Dunn and his colleagues named the mesmerizing fossil genus "Auroralumina," which translates to dawn lanterns due to its resemblance to burning torches. Meanwhile, to delight Sir David Attenborough, well-known for hunting for fossils nearby in his youth, the team gave the species name "attenboroughii," reports ScienceAlert.
The strange creature shares many characteristics with early Cambrian cnidarians. But, unlike them, the animal's touch tubular exoskeleton was smooth.
Dunn says it's the earliest creature found with a skeleton. To date, only one fossil is known; it's massively exciting for paleontologists to know that there might have been other complex life on Earth.
Experts believe that the lonely predator may have been swept from a shallower home to deeper waters by a flank of volcanic ash. It lies at an odd angle compared to its neighbors, who were flattened and preserved in the direction of the deluge hit.
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