UK scientists have uncovered a fossil that represents the oldest known animal predator.
The specimen, which was discovered in Leicestershire’s Charnwood Forest and is 560 million years old, is likely an ancestor of cnidaria, the group of organisms that includes jellyfish today.
In honor of Sir David Attenborough, researchers have named this species Auroralumina Attenborough.
The initial element of the name is derived from the Latin for “dawn lantern.”
“It reminds me of the Olympic torch, with its tentacles representing the flames,” said Dr. Frankie Dunn of Oxford University, who reported the discovery in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Not only does it push back evidence of predation in the animal kingdom by around 20 million years, but it is also likely the first example of a real skeleton.
The creature’s outline was engraved on a long, sloping slab of quarry siltstone, surrounded by other fossil forms.
It is believed that all were buried by a turbulent flow of material and ash that poured down the ancient volcano’s underwater flank.
In 2007, as researchers cleaned the Charnwood rock face with high-pressure hoses, the crime scene was discovered.
It has taken the 15 years since then to comprehend the assembly and Auroralumina’s position within it.
The Leicestershire location is renowned worldwide for what it reveals about the Ediacaran period (635 to 538 to million years ago).
This is the geological epoch immediately before the Cambrian, during which the number and variety of living forms on Earth experienced a tremendous explosion.
During the Cambrian period (538 to 485 million years ago), many contemporary animal groupings were established.
However, Auroralumina demonstrates that its group, the cnidaria, has a heritage that dates back to the Ediacaran.
“This is irrefutable proof that organisms resembling current ones existed in the Pre-Cambrian. This indicates that the fuse for the Cambrian explosion was likely rather long, according to Dr. Phil Wilby, leader of paleontology at the British Geological Survey.
Although the term cnidaria may not be widely known, its members are universally recognizable. There are corals, jellyfish, and anemones among them. Utilizing stinging cells to grab prey is one of their distinguishing features.
Dr. Dunn’s examination of Auroralumina’s characteristics places it within the subgroup of medusozoa within the cnidaria.
In the course of their complicated life cycles, medusozoans pass through a variety of stages. During one phase, they are fixed to the seafloor as a mass. Later, they undergo a metamorphosis into a sexual phase in which they reproduce.
Throughout this stage, they assume an umbrella-shaped body with venomous tentacles. They turn into jellyfish.
Therefore, Auroralumina most closely resembles a medusozoan in its rooted, immobile state.
“What’s fascinating is that we believe it’s bifurcating, so you have these two ‘goblets’ that are joined towards their base, and then there would have been a continuous piece of skeleton continuing down to the seafloor, which we don’t see. “The fossil is unfortunately incomplete,” Dr. Dunn told.
Bifurcation, the separation of anything into two branches or portions, is another fossil record first for Auroralumina.
Charnwood Forest is visited by paleontologists from all over the world.
It is most famous for the fossil known as Charnia masoni.
It was discovered in the 1950s by two schoolchildren, Roger Mason and Tina Negus, and was the very first Pre-Cambrian fossil to be discovered.
Later, Charnia was discovered in the rocks of Australia’s Ediacara Hills, for which the Ediacaran Period is named.
It resembles a fern frond, but scientists believe it was an animal of some sort.
In the siltstone assemblage, there is also a specimen about 40 centimeters away from Auroralumina.
There is a lovely connection between this location and Sir David Attenborough, who was raised in the English midlands.
“I was an avid fossil seeker while attending school in Leicester,” he recounted.
“Before the discovery of Auroralumina, it was believed that the rocks in which it was found were so ancient that they predated the origin of life on Earth. I never sought fossils there as a result.
“A few years later, a student from my former high school discovered one, proving the experts wrong.” His reward was that his finding was given his name. Now that I have almost caught up with him, I am ecstatic.”
