British paleontologists have discovered body prints of the world’s oldest jellyfish, in central England.
The journal Nature Ecology & Evolution states that this ancient creature is 557 million years old and is named after the famous scientist David Attenborough.
“The stinging animals, one of the oldest creatures in the world, whose stages of development during the Cambrian period have been studied in detail. We also found the carcass of an ancient jellyfish that lived before the Ediacaran period. This is the first evidence that stinging animals lived before the Cambrian period,” said the researchers. .
It should be noted that most modern animal groups and species appeared during the so-called Cambrian explosion, about 540-520 million years ago – a sharp acceleration in evolution and an increase in multicellular diversity that organism. The ancestors of worms, insects, fish, various invertebrates and vertebrates that lived on Earth during this time appeared during this time.
It preceded the appearance of sea sponges, whose fossils have been found in Ediacaran sediments. According to geneticists, jellyfish and other sea-dwelling invertebrates, including hydras and corals, appeared during this time as the ancestors of modern combers.
A team of British paleontologists discovered the earliest traces of the body of a jellyfish known to scientists during ongoing excavations in Charnwood Forest, which lived on Earth 557 million years ago. This animal appears as a hybrid between a jellyfish and a coral. Its body resembles the unique shape of a jellyfish, but is divided into several polyps, similar in structure to coral reefs.
Based on the results of subsequent studies, researchers hypothesized that this animal is the common ancestor of all existing jellyfish species. Therefore, these fossils are important for studying the evolution of the first multicellular creatures that appeared on Earth.
Scientists have named this animal Auroralumina attenboroughii, meaning “Attenborough’s Pole of Dawn”. The researchers explained that the first name reflects its lantern shape, and the second name is to honor the famous scientist David Attenborough, who contributed to the popularization of other discoveries that took place in Charnwood Forest.
source: tass
Source: Arabic RT
