Evidence of sophisticated animal locomotion 565 million years ago.

marco_polo

Analysis of Ediacaran rocks from NewFoundland has uncovered evidence of what are believed to be the oldest known animal tracks in the world dating from 565 million years ago.

The trails, which look much like those laid down by modern sea anemones are highly signifigant because it demonstrates that the Ediacaran fauna were not all stationary or passively floating animals, but rather some at least had already developed a sophisticated musculature some 23 million years before the start of the Cambrian "Explosion".

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203085914.htm

The newly-discovered fossils, from rocks in Newfoundland in Canada, were analysed by an international team led by Oxford University scientists. They identified over 70 fossilised trails indicating that some ancient creatures moved, in a similar way to modern sea anemones, across the seafloors of the Ediacaran Period.

The team publish a report of their research in the February edition of the journal Geology.

'The markings we've found clearly indicate that these organisms could exert some sort of muscular control during locomotion,' said Alex Liu of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, an author of the paper. 'This is exciting because it is the first evidence that creatures from this early period of Earth's history had muscles to allow them to move around -- enabling them to hunt for food or escape adverse local conditions and, importantly, indicating that they were probably animals.

Galvasean

Hooray! Hopefully now we can ditch the term 'Cambrian explosion' forever. that stupid term has people thinking that complex life spontaneously popped up out of nowhere one day.

Sam Vimes

Galvasean wrote: »

Hooray! Hopefully now we can ditch the term 'Cambrian explosion' forever. that stupid term has people thinking that complex life spontaneously popped up out of nowhere one day.

It did. Read your bible :rolleyes:


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