Scientists Find 538-Million-Year-Old Deuterostome Fossils in China, Pushing Complex Animal Origins Back
Updated
Updated · SciTechDaily · Jun 26
Scientists Find 538-Million-Year-Old Deuterostome Fossils in China, Pushing Complex Animal Origins Back
2 articles · Updated · SciTechDaily · Jun 26
Summary
Fossils from China’s Jiangchuan biota include the oldest known deuterostomes — the group that includes starfish, acorn worms and humans’ closest invertebrate relatives — from the late Ediacaran, just before the Cambrian explosion.
The finds fill a long-debated gap because evidence for pre-Cambrian bilaterians had mostly come from burrows and trails, not preserved bodies showing recognizable complex anatomy.
Researchers also uncovered a tethered “bugle worm,” Cambrian-like Mackenzia-type forms, worms and ctenophores, indicating multiple complex animal groups already coexisted with enigmatic Ediacaran organisms.
The study, published in Science, suggests complex animal life did not appear all at once around 538 million years ago but had deeper roots extending back millions of years earlier.
Could this 'lost world' of ancient animals be hidden globally, only visible through the unique geological lens found in China?
If complex animals lived alongside simpler life for millions of years, what finally triggered their global takeover in the Cambrian period?
Our own ancestors existed in a lost world millions of years older than we knew. What does this discovery rewrite about human origins?
Jiangchuan Biota Reveals Earliest Evidence of Complex Animals and Rewrites Cambrian Explosion Timeline
Overview
The Jiangchuan Biota, discovered in Yunnan Province by a dedicated research team from Yunnan University, is a groundbreaking fossil site that has transformed our understanding of early animal evolution. This discovery provides strong evidence that diverse and complex animal life existed at the very end of the Ediacaran period, pushing back the timeline for the emergence of such organisms. Years of fieldwork led to this find, which has fundamentally changed scientific perspectives on the origins of complex animal groups and highlights the importance of perseverance in uncovering the deep history of life on Earth.