Tag Archives: ediacaran

The oldest animals appear in the fossil record among Ediacaran biota communities. In new research, paleontologists from the Australian National University and elsewhere examined the gut contents of three Ediacaran species — the 558-million-year-old tube worm-like Calyptrina and the mollusk-like Kimberella as well as one of the key Ediacaran animals, …

Paleontologists have described the first three-dimensional preservation of soft tissue in Namacalathus hermanastes, a skeletal metazoan (multicellular animal) that lived some 547 million years ago (Ediacaran period) in what is now Namibia, and established a strong evolutionary link between Ediacaran and early Cambrian metazoans. Namacalathus (individuals numbered). Centimeter scale. Image …