London-Sana
British scientists have discovered during excavations in the Charnwood Forest in central England the body imprints of the oldest jellyfish on Earth.
According to the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the scientists explained that the age of this ancient creature is 557 million years, and it is one of the stinging animals that is considered one of the oldest creatures on Earth, noting that finding traces of the body of an ancient jellyfish that lived before the Ediacaran era is the first evidence that Stingrays lived before the Cambrian period.
The scientists pointed out that this animal appears to be a hybrid between a jellyfish and a coral reef because its body resembles the distinctive shape of a jellyfish, but it is divided into several polyps that are similar in structure to coral reefs.
Scientists named the discovered animal after the famous scientist David Attenborough in honor of the famous scientist who helped popularize other discoveries that took place in the Charnwood Forest.
Based on the results of subsequent studies, researchers have expressed their belief that this animal is a common ancestor of all current jellyfish species, so these fossils are very important for studying the evolution of the first multicellular creatures that appeared on Earth.
It is noteworthy that most modern groups and types of animals appeared about 520-540 million years ago during the so-called Cambrian explosion, where there was a sharp acceleration in evolution and an increase in the diversity of multicellular organisms. Currently, however, the stinging invertebrates that live in the seas preceded them and were generally found in the sediments of the Ediacaran period.
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