Tracking Back Animal Evolution |Spiny acritarchs preserved in
Doushantuo phosphorites. Image credit: Virginia Tech Scientists
interested in ancient life have a wealth of fossils and
impressions frozen in rocks that they can study from as far back
as 540 million years ago - when animals with shells and bones
began to become plentiful. But evidence of complex life older
than 540 million years is scant and difficult to study. Now, a
research team from Virginia Tech in the United States and
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China has
discovered uniquely well-preserved fossils form from 550 million
year old rocks of the Ediacaran Period. Shuhai Xiao,
geoscientist from Virginia Tech, with Bing Shen, a Virginia Tech
graduate student, and Chuanming Zhou, Guwei Xie, and Xunlai
Yuan, all of the Nanjing Instititue of Geology and Paleontology,
report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS) the discovery of these unusually preserved fossils which
reveal unprecedented information about