A goblet full of wriggling fingers is what a strange creature that lived in the deep ocean looked like. An analysis of a newly described fossil suggests that it may be an ancient relative of modern jellyfish.
Scientists discovered a fossil of a purported jellyfish relative in the Bradgate Formation in England more than a decade ago. The outcrop is located in Charnwood Forest and was formed during the Ediacaran period.
The Cambrian explosion, a 55 million-year episode in which life on Earth rapidly diversified, was preceded by the discovery of the new fossil. arthropod ancestors of insects, spiders and crustaceans, as well as clamlike and hard-shelled brachiopods, evolved during the Cambrian Period.
Philip Donoghue, a professor of palaeobiology at the University of Bristol in England, was not involved in the discovery of the animal. "They found an animal, a member of a modern group of animals, where they're classically not meant to be found," Donoghue said.
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Most of the Ediacaran fossils don't share structural features with any living animals so they're thought to belong to extinct animal groups. Donoghue said that the fossil was probably the oldest one to be a member of a large group of related animals.
The researchers named the animal Auroralumina attenboroughii and described it in a new study. The name Auroralumina meansdawn lantern in Latin and refers to the fossil's old age and its torch-like shape. The authors wrote that the species was named after Sir David Attenborough because of his work raising awareness of the Ediacaran fossils of Charnwood Forest.
The first major fossil discoveries in Charnwood Forest were made in the 1950s when Tina Negus and Roger Mason stumbled upon a fern-shaped fossil. Paleontologists have traveled to Charnwood to look for similar snapshots of Precambrian life since the discovery of Charnia masoni.
The scientists focused their search on a rockface that rose from the forest floor at a 45 degree angle and wore a thick coat of dirt. The team used high-pressure water jets to expose any fossils hidden under the muck after digging into the rockface.
Philip Wilby, a team leader for Palaeontology at the British Geological Survey and senior author of the study, said that after cleaning the dirt, there were a thousand fossils on the surface. Many of the fossils looked like frond-like creatures found in Precambrian rocks.
Wilby said that some of them were absolutely stunning.
The rubber casts of the rockface were taken to the lab. It's difficult to work with such impressions because they're all flattened and squidged. In order to create 3D models of their flat fossil casts, the researchers used a technique that involved illuminating the casts from different angles and snapping lots of photos; these photos were then compiled into a virtual 3D model that could be manipulated digitally.
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One of the fossils looked like a candelabra with two goblet-like structures branching off from a single point. Wilby said that they seem to have parted ways from one another. The tip of the short tentacles could be seen poking over the edge of the goblets. Ridges on the sides of the fossil show that the goblets were supported by a skeleton.
The first animal that we're aware of growing a skeleton is this one. The earliest known predator in the animal kingdom is believed to have fed on plankton.
The core characteristics of A. attenboroughii are similar to those of Medusozoa, a group of animals that evolved into free-swimming, bell-shaped creatures. Wilby believes that it is a Medusozoan. It's important to note that, for part of their life cycle, Medusozoans do not look like aJellyfish. Animals anchor themselves to the floor to reproduce asexually. They look like anemones during this stage.
If A. attenboroughii is a member of Medusozoa, it would join a larger group of organisms known as the cnidarians. Prior to the new study, it was thought that the blueprint for cnidarians didn't emerge until after the Cambrian period. At least 20 million years before that, the blueprints for cnidarians were set.
Donoghue said that this pushes back the evolutionary history of cnidarians and provides clues about what animals must have come before them. Cnidarians and Bilaterians are a group of animals that include humans. It is possible that the split already occurred and the first bilaterians were already on the planet.
Donoghue said that the fossil is important for showing us that cnidarians are here.
It was originally published on Live Science
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