WIKIMEDIA, MISTAKENPOINTAbout 550 million years ago, at the bottom of the ocean near modern-day Newfoundland, organisms called rangeomorphs were reproducing in remarkably complex ways. The creatures could create clones as plants do, plus bud off progeny that could float away and produce their own clones, according to a study published this week (August 3) in Nature.
“Reproduction in this way made rangeomorphs highly successful, since they could both colonise new areas and rapidly spread once they got there,” Emily Mitchell, a postdoc at the University of Cambridge who led the study, said in a press release. “The capacity of these organisms to switch between two distinct modes of reproduction shows just how sophisticated their underlying biology was, which is remarkable at a point in time when most other forms of life were incredibly simple.”
Neither plant nor animal, rangeomorphs were some of the first complex organisms to have evolved. They had a flat, oval shape that branched in a fern-like pattern. They likely lived at on the seafloor and absorbed nutrients.
Analyzing fossils, Mitchell and her colleagues found the distribution of ...
