Ediacarans: Did competition kill off Earth’s mysterious first animals?

By Michael Marshall

Not all of the early animal species died out for the usual reasons. There was no disaster caused by climate change or supervolcano, according to a new study. Increased competition between the newly evolved animals resulted in the die-off.

Emily Mitchell at the University of Cambridge says that when we think of mass extinctions, we think of them as generated. The extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was caused by an asteroid hitting Earth.

Mitchell says that the earlier extinction was different.

The Ediacaran period lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. The earliest known complex animals lived at this time, including many soft-bodied creatures that look strange compared with modern animals.