Scientists say Auroralumina attenboroughii is the earliest creature identified to have a skeleton.
LONDON, UK — A fossil of a 560-million-year-old creature, which researchers believe to be the primary animal predator, has been named after the British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough.
Scientists stated Monday they consider the specimen, named Auroralumina attenboroughii, is the earliest creature identified to have a skeleton. It’s associated to the group that features corals, jellyfish and anemones, they are saying.
“It’s typically held that fashionable animal teams like jellyfish appeared 540 million years in the past within the Cambrian explosion,” stated Phil Wilby, a palaeontologist on the British Geological Survey. “However this predator predates that by 20 million years.”
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He stated it was “massively thrilling” to know that the fossil was one in all probably many who maintain the important thing to “when advanced life started on Earth.”
The fossil was present in Charnwood Forest close to Leicester in central England, the place Attenborough used to go fossil looking.
The 96-year-old stated he was “really delighted.”
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Frankie Dunn, from the Oxford College Museum of Pure Historical past, stated the specimen was very completely different to different fossils present in Charnwood Forest and world wide.
Dunn stated, in contrast to most different fossils from the Cambrian interval, “this one clearly has a skeleton, with densely-packed tentacles that may have waved round within the water capturing passing meals, very similar to corals and sea anemones do right this moment.”
The primary a part of the creature’s title is Latin for daybreak lantern, in recognition of its nice age and resemblance to a burning torch.
The Cambrian explosion, which occurred between about 541 million to 530 million years in the past, was an evolutionary burst that noticed the emergence of an enormous range of animals. Lots of the creatures advanced laborious physique elements equivalent to calcium carbonate shells throughout this time.
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