A University of Cambridge-led research team has announced the discovery of a 560-million-year-old animal fossil preserved in three dimensions (3D) in a sheep field in the Norwegian Arctic.
The exceptionally rare Ediacaran Period fossil is the first of its kind in Europe in decades and gives scientists a unique window into a period of Earth’s history when the first complex life forms began to appear.
The discovery suggests the site could hide an entire lost ancient ecosystem that has remained hidden for hundreds of millions of years.
3D Fossil of 560-Million-Year-Old Lifeform ‘Unlike Animal Life Today’
When announcing the historic discovery, the Cambridge-led team noted that the fossil, called a Charnia, resembles a fern more than any animal life we would likely recognize today.
For example, Charnia has none of the organs we typically associate with animals. The archaic life form also lacks a mouth or visible means of locomotion. The closest modern comparison would be a sedentary jellyfish.
While previous efforts have identified ancient animal-life fossils from this period, the team noted that most are found as “flat impressions.” As a result, Professor Neil Davies from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences said that many fossils from this period “occur as impressions where they’ve been squashed down under layers of rock,” like a flower pressed into a book.
“As a fossil record, the Ediacaran has several things working against it, primarily that most organisms were soft-bodied and skeletons hadn’t evolved yet, so that they are harder to preserve,” the team member and co-author of the study detailing the research explained.
Dr Veema agreed, while noting the difficulty in finding such rare specimens.
“Fossils need to be embedded within sedimentary rocks to be found, so if the rocks themselves are less common, then that makes the fossils harder to find,” the researcher explained. “Most Ediacaran fossils come from just a handful of locations, which makes it exciting to find them somewhere new.”
Fortunately, the newly identified 560-million-year-old life form was preserved in all three dimensions. The team said that discovering an ancient life form preserved in 3D is incredibly rare, particularly for soft-bodied organisms like Charnia. Finding one from this extremely ancient time, when animal life first began to appear, is even more unlikely, making the discovery unusually rare.
Well-Preserved Charnia Reveals Previously Unknown Details
560 million years ago, when this Charnia was still alive, evidence suggests that it was buried during an ancient underwater avalanche. This sudden submergence also filled the animal’s body with sediment. The researchers said these events caused the fossil to become preserved in 3D
For example, the research team identified small ridges along the animal’s branches. Called keels, these extremely subtle features had never been detected in other, flatter Charnia fossils.
Dr Yorick Veenma, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and the lead author of the study detailing the team’s discovery, said finding a 3D fossil from this archaic time has provided them with an entirely new perspective.
“When you see the same species preserved in a different way, you start noticing properties you hadn’t seen before,” Dr. Veenma explained.
“There May Be a Whole Undiscovered Community of These Very Early Organisms”
Although scientists have found a few fossils from this period, they are often from the same handful of sites. However, this is the first time one has been found in Norway. Dr. Veema said this shows that discoveries can be made “in less familiar places.”
The researchers also successfully identified other components of the ancient ecosystem that this Charnia fossil called home. Future efforts may reveal that it was one small part of a larger, ‘lost’ ancient ecosystem supporting a variety of complex life forms.
“There may be a whole undiscovered community of these very early organisms preserved up there,” Davies explained. “Weird little umbrella-shaped blobs, things that don’t fit with what people know from elsewhere.”
“There are a whole host of different things that were not known before,” the researcher added.
The study “Charnia and other late Ediacaran macrofossils preserved in turbiditic deposits of the Indreelva Member (Finnmark, Norway)” was published in Paleontology.
Christopher Plain has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Reporter at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his novels at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.