US EditionScientists Discover 90 Strange New Species From 512 Million Years Ago
The Huayuan biota contains 153 species, nearly 60% new to science, revealing deep-water refuges helped survival after the Sinsk extinction, researchers said.
- Ancient relatives of worms, sponges, jellyfish and arthropods were discovered fossilized in a quarry in China that survived a mass extinction event 512 million years ago.
- Many fossils showed soft body parts like gills, guts, eyes and nerves, and apex predators of the time called radiodonts were among the discoveries.
- The findings represent the first major discovery of soft-bodied fossils from right after the Sinsk mass extinction event around 513 million years ago when up to half of animals died off.
39 Articles
39 Articles
Dozens of Bizarre Ancient Lifeforms Discovered in ‘Extraordinary’ Fossil Find
🌘Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that roamed a superocean, took to the skies, grabbed some grub, and watched alien auroras.First, check out some 512-million-year-old guts, brains, and tentacles. Gnarly! Then, dig into the mega-importance of Microraptor, some entomological edibles…
Huayuan biota decodes Earth’s first Phanerozoic mass extinction
While paleontologists have uncovered dozens of such Cambrian soft-bodied fossil sites—including China's early Cambrian Chengjiang biota in Yunnan and Canada's middle Cambrian Burgess Shale biota, the most famous examples of their kind—no equivalent top-tier soft-bodied fossil deposit had ever been found from the critical post-Sinsk Event time interval. That changed over the past five years, however, with the discovery of the…
Chinese fossils show marine animals thriving half a billion years ago
Scientists have unearthed in southern China fossils of a multitude of marine creatures dating to more than a half billion years ago, showing a deep-water ecosystem thriving in the aftermath of the first mass extinction of the animal world.
China fossil find offers glimpse into emergence of complex life
A huge find of 512-million-year-old fossils in southern China offered new insights into the first boom of complex life. The “Cambrian explosion,” around 530 million years ago, saw a flowering of diversity. Before then, fossils revealed simple, mostly microbial life; in a brief few million years afterward, things like modern animals, and many weirder and since-lost things, emerged. Most of what we know of the period comes from one famous site, Ca…
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