Dickinsonia fossil.
LANNON HARLEY, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
Organic material taken from the fossilized remains of Dickinsonia—a group of organisms that died more than 541 million years ago—contains a combination of lipids characteristic of the animal kingdom. The finding, reported in Science today (September 20), establishes Dickinsonia as one of the earliest forms of macroscopic animal life to have evolved on Earth.
“I’m in awe of the work. It’s a fabulous study. The chemistry is robust. It’s an incredibly interesting observation,” says MIT geobiologist Roger Summons, who was not involved with the project but who has written about it in a review.
“This paper is a potential game changer, providing some degree of certainty . . . to suggest that animals evolved long before the Cambrian [period],” adds paleobiologist Philip Donoghue of Bristol University in the UK who also did not participate in the research.
Fossils within rocks that date from the ...
