Fossils like this oddity consist of carbon-rich material in very old sediment deposits.
Credit: Gaorong Li and Xiaodong Wang
Fossils like this oddity consist of carbon-rich material in very old sediment deposits.
Credit: Gaorong Li and Xiaodong Wang
But one important difference is the presence of Ediacaran species. Even if the researchers didn’t tell you, you can figure it out from the description of these creatures written in everyday English: “The four bulges appear to be arranged in pairs, each with two connected branches surrounding a central depression.” The main reason for this is that we don’t really understand what any of these features represent physically, so we can’t use the technical terms that were developed to describe recent features.
But the big difference is how many other groups of animals exist, many of which were apparently not found before the Cambrian.
What is there?
These include cnidarians, a group of radially symmetric organisms including extant jellyfish. There were six different fossils of one species that resembled the known fossil species haotia quadriformisWhich had tetraradial symmetry and lots of sides. While the new species is clearly distinct from it, it shares the arms, and the fossils preserve muscle fibers.
Another fossil appears to be a ctenophore, what we today call a comb jelly. Ctenophores apparently existed in the Cambrian, and this looks a lot like them. The fossil appears to contain rows of cilia that these creatures used to move around in the water. Critically, this pushes the origin of some features of ctenophores back to the period when we first had confirmation that they existed.
There is also something similar to mackenziids, an organism described in one paper as “a mysterious and poorly understood soft-bodied organism” from the Cambrian. It also has rows of structures, although they appear to be internal tubes; Its strange nature has suggested that it may have been a part of Ediacaran life, and this discovery shows that they existed so early.
This little guy (gal? hermaphrodite?) is a member of the group that includes jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals.
Gaorong Li and Xiaodong Wang.
This little guy (gal? hermaphrodite?) is a member of the group that includes jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals.
Gaorong Li and Xiaodong Wang.
This creature is part of a group that before these discoveries was known only from the Cambrian. It is not clear what relation it is to any known organism.
Gaorong Li.
This creature is part of a group that before these discoveries was known only from the Cambrian. It is not clear what relation it is to any known organism.
Gaorong Li.
A creature with a worm-like body that was also attached to the sea floor.
Gaorong Li.
A creature with a worm-like body that was also attached to the seabed.
Gaorong Li.
This creature is part of a group that before these discoveries was known only from the Cambrian. It is not clear what relation it is to any known organism.
Gaorong Li.
A creature with a worm-like body that was also attached to the seabed.
Gaorong Li.
But the star of the show may be an insect. Insects are apparently bilateral, a group of animals with left/right symmetry that includes our own species. And the place was crawling with insects, though not ones that actually crawled, seeing as the structure behind them was designed to attach to a surface. The mouth at the other end was capable of extending some external structures outside the animal’s body, as seen in the jaws of some animals today.
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