Researchers discover a 560-million-year-old predator fossil during excavations. Auroralumina attenboroughii, that’s what they call their new discovery – in honor of the nature filmmaker David Attenborough. The Brit is visibly enthusiastic.
In honor of the British nature filmmaker David Attenborough, researchers have named a special species after him. Auroralumina attenboroughii is the earliest known carnivore, said British Geological Survey chief paleontologist Phil Wilby.
The fossil discovered in the Charnwood forest near the English city of Leicester is around 560 million years old, writes Wilby’s team in the journal “Nature Ecology
“The rocks in which Auroralumina has now been discovered were thought to be so old at the time that they formed long before there was life on the planet,” he said. “That’s why I never looked for fossils there.” A few years later, however, a boy from his school found one there and disproved the experts.
Modern animal groups like jellyfish are believed to have formed around 540 million years ago during a phase called the Cambrian Explosion, Wilby said. But this animal is 20 million years older. So far only one specimen has been found. It is also the first known animal with a skeleton. “But it’s incredibly exciting to know that there must be others out there who hold the key to the beginnings of complex life on Earth,” Wilby said.
According to the study, the species that has now been discovered is related to corals, jellyfish and anemones. Auroralumina could have eaten phytoplankton, but also newly emerged zooplankton, the researchers write in the study. The latter consists of tiny animals floating in the water.
In 2007, Wilby and other researchers spent a week working with toothbrushes, among other things, on a 100 square meter rock surface. In total, more than 1000 fossils were found, but one stood out.
“This one is very different from other fossils in Charnwood Forest and around the world,” said Frankie Dunn of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. For most fossils from the period, it is not clear how they are related to living animals. This one clearly had a skeleton with tightly packed tentacles that could have swirled around in the water and caught passing food, much like coral and sea anemones do today, Dunn said. It is incomparable.
