Exquisite fossils show butterflies appeared before there were flowers to pollinate
"315,000-Year-Old Fossils From Morocco Could Be Earliest Recorded Homo Sapiens"
by Ben Guarino January 10 at 2:00 PM
[VIDEO] 1:29 Researchers are studying ancient fragments of insect wings to understand how these animals evolved. (Rixt Heerschop & Timo van Eldijk)
The two paleontologists dissolving rock cores more than 200 million years old were looking for vestiges of freshwater algae. Instead, tiny fragments of insect scales caught their eye — remnants that a report published Wednesday identifies as the oldest evidence of butterflies and moths.
A series of fortunate events led to this discovery, which dates the insects to around 70 million years earlier than previously known, well before there were flowers around that they could pollinate.
558m-year-old fossils identified as oldest known animal
"315,000-Year-Old Fossils From Morocco Could Be Earliest Recorded Homo Sapiens"
Oval-shaped Dickinsonia lifeform existed at least 20m years before the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of animal life
Anthea Lacchia Thu 20 Sep 2018 14.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 21 Sep 2018 05.02 EDT
VIDEO: - 2:02 Scientists reveal secrets of oldest known animal fossil – video
A fossilised lifeform that existed 558m years ago has been identified as the oldest known animal, according to new research.
The findings confirm that animals existed at least 20m years before the so-called Cambrian explosion of animal life, which took place about 540m years ago and saw the emergence of modern-looking animals such as snails, bivalves and arthropods.
[...]
“It is the exact type and composition of that fat that was the giveaway that Dickinsonia was in fact an animal,” said Jochen Brocks of the Australian National University, one of the authors on the study. He added that the study solves “a decades-old mystery that has been the holy grail of palaeontology”.
The cliffs in which the fossils were found, on the coast of the White Sea in Russia. Photograph: Ilya Bobrovskiy
The fossils were discovered on two surfaces on a cliffside in the remote wilderness of north-west Russia by PhD student Ilya Bobrovskiy, who is lead author on the paper, published in the journal Science .. http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aat7228 .
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