An international team of researchers have uncovered the ancient diet of the oldest animals on Earth.
The earliest evidence of food being eaten by animals was found in the fossils of Ediac bioaranta, according to scientists.
The compounds found in the fossils suggest that the animal had a mouth and a gut and ate from the ocean.
Prof Jochen Brocks of the Australian National University said fossils from the Ediacaran period were some of the most important fossils in evolution. You can see them with your eyes.
The researchers think that Kimberella was an advanced animal.
Brocks compared a gut to more primordial animals. Sponges, corals and jellyfish don't have a normal gut.
The Kimberella gut was able to reject other molecules that it didn't like and take up the fat molecule cholesterol.
The team found that the second creature was less advanced than the first.
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Brocks described Dickinsonia as looking like a "ribbed bathmat lying around on the sea floor".
The lead author of the study collected the fossils from the cliffs near the White Sea.
Dickinsonia is the oldest undisputed animal fossil, dating to around 500m ago.
The evidence that mesh-like patterns in rock samples from 890m ago resemble the networks of modern sponges has been debated by experts.
Some of the creatures that gave rise to theCambrian explosion, to the rise of modern animals, were contained in the Ediacaran biota. Almost all major animal groups appeared in the fossil record during the time of the Cambrian explosion.
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