Scientists have confirmed what took more than 75 years to verify – the world’s oldest known fossil – Dickinsonia. (Source: Cities of the world/YouTube)
With the help of fat molecules, scientists have now solved a mystery that had baffled and puzzled the community for long – identifying an ancient creature as one of the earliest animals on the planet. It has taken more than 75 years for researchers to classify the Dickinsonia, a jellyfish-like creature that inhabited our planet many million years ago.
The challenge the scientists were faced with lied in determining what exactly Dickinsonia was – fungi, protists or animals.
An international team of researchers has now been able to pull out striking evidence that Dickinsonia were indeed early animals. They used modern chemistry to confirm their findings and published their work in the journal Science.
What did the Dickinsonia look like?
According to the National Geographic, the description of a Dickinsonia fits a flat, squishy, oval-shaped being with multiple rib-like segments that could grow to over four feet long.
Thought to be the first complex multicellular organisms on Earth, Dickinsonia belonged to a group of life forms Ediacaran biota, that are now extinct.
How long ago did Dickinsonia inhabit the planet?
Dickinsonia emerged in warm, shallow seas somewhat 570 million years back. That dates back to much before the famous Cambrian explosion 540 million years ago – a period that marked an abundance of new and diverse life forms like mollusks, worms, and sponges, within a very short period of time.
How did fat molecules help the study?
It was found in the new study that the Dickinsonia fossils contained significant levels of cholesterol – a hallmark of animal life. It is an important finding because it confirms that animals were large and abundant on Earth millions of years earlier than previously thought, according to Jochen Brocks, one of the authors of the study.
“The fossil fat now confirms Dickinsonia as the oldest known animal fossil, solving a decades-old mystery that has been the Holy Grail of palaeontology,” Brocks said.
Where were the fossils found?
Most of the rocks containing Dickinsonia fossils near Bobrovskiy’s university in Australia had to bear the brunt of natural heat, pressure, and weathering over many, many years. So, the team of researchers had to travel to a remote area in northwest Russia to hunt for the fossils needed to confirm the study.
“I took a helicopter to reach this very remote part of the world – home to bears and mosquitoes – where I could find Dickinsonia fossils with the organic matter still intact,” Bobrovskiy said.
But what really is the point of finding out about these jelly-fish like creatures? “It is essential if we want to understand the emergence and evolution of our own earliest ancestors”, Bobrovskiy explained.