Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) have uncovered new insights into the physiology of our earliest animal ancestors by studying the contents of the last meal consumed by the Ediacara biota, the world's oldest large organisms dating back 575 million years. The research, publi
Ediacara biota
family that lived on Earth about 20 million years prior to the Cambrian Explosion – a major event that forever changed the course of evolution of all life on Earth.really are the oldest fossils large enough to be visible with your naked eyes, and they are the origin of us and all animals that exist today. These creatures are our deepest visible roots,” Dr. Bobrovskiy, who completed the work as part of his Ph.D. at ANU, said.
Study co-author Professor Jochen Brocks, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, said algae are rich in energy and nutrients and may have been instrumental forwere so large. Nearly all fossils that came before theUsing advanced chemical analysis techniques, the ANU scientists were able to extract and analyze the sterol molecules contained in the fossil tissue.
“This was a Eureka moment for us; by using the preserved chemicals in the fossils, we can now make gut contents of animals visible even if the gut has since long decayed. We then used this same technique on weirder fossils likeDr. Bobrovskiy retrieved both thefossils from steep cliffs near the White Sea in Russia — a remote part of the world home to bears and mosquitoes — in 2018.
Reference: “Guts, gut contents, and feeding strategies of Ediacaran animals” by Ilya Bobrovskiy, Alexey Nagovitsyn, Janet M. Hope, Ekaterina Luzhnaya and Jochen J. Brocks, 22 November 2022,
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