Oldest Known Predatory Animal With Hard Parts Named After Sir David Attenborough
Geologists have found the fossil of the earliest known predatory animal with hard parts. The 560-million-year-old specimen is the first of its kind, but it is related to the group that includes corals, jellyfish and anemones living on the planet today.
The paleontologists who discovered it have named it Auroralumina attenboroughii in honor of famed British broadcaster, naturalist, and fossilist Sir David Frederick Attenborough. The first part of its name is Latin for “dawn lantern,” in recognition of its great age and resemblance of the polyp-like animal to a burning torch.
It was found in Charnwood Forest, near Leicester in England, which is famous for its fossils dating back 560 million years. In 1957, the species Charnia masoni found here turned out to be one of the oldest fossilized animals known at the time.
“When I was at school in Leicester I was an ardent fossil hunter. The rocks in which Auroralumina has now been discovered were then considered to be so ancient that they dated from long before life began on the planet. So I never looked for fossils there. A few years later a boy from my school found one and proved the experts wrong. He was rewarded by his name being given to his discovery (Sir David is referring to Roger Mason, after whom C. masoni was named). Now I have—almost—caught up with him and I am truly delighted,” so Sir David Attenborough commenting the discovery.
The discovery of Auroralumina throws into question when modern groups of animals appeared on Earth. Dr. Phil Wilby, paleontology lead at British Geological Survey, is one of the scientists who made the find. He says, “It’s generally held that modern animal groups like jellyfish appeared 540 million years ago, in the Cambrian Explosion, but this predator predates that by 20 million years.”
Unlike other organisms living at the time, lacking any hard parts or organs to catch prey, A.attenboroughii displays a series of tentacles protruding from a cone-shaped shell, like seen in modern coral polyps, to catch microorganisms in the water.
“It’s the earliest creature we know of to have a skeleton. So far we’ve only found one, but it’s massively exciting to know there must be others out there, holding the key to when complex life began on Earth.”
Dr. Frankie Dunn from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History carried out the detailed study. She says, “This is very different to the other fossils in Charnwood Forest and around the world. Most other fossils from this time have extinct body plans and it’s not clear how they are related to living animals. This one clearly has a skeleton, with densely packed tentacles that would have waved around in the water capturing passing food, much like corals and sea anemones do today. It’s nothing like anything else we’ve found in the fossil record at the time.”
“Our discovery shows that the body plan of the cnidarians [corals; jellyfish; sea anemones, etc.] was fixed at least 20 million years before this, so it’s hugely exciting and raises many more questions,” says Dr. Dunn.
The paper “A crown-group cnidarian from the Ediacaran of Charnwood Forest, UK” is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution (2022). Materials provided by the British Geological Survey.
