Well, if Dickinsonia doesn’t have bilateral symmetry, maybe “animal” is a flag of convenience? Call it an animal and close the file?
Tag: Dickinsonia
Researchers: Dickinsonia (571–541 mya) could have had mouth and guts
Associate Professor Jochen Brocks commented, “These fossils comprise our best window into earliest animal evolution and are the key to understanding our own deep origins.” Yes, in the sense that sudden emergence rather than a long, slow Darwinian process seems more likely all the time.
Gunter Bechly: Dickinsonia is NOT likely an animal
Rather, he thinks, it is an unknown type of life form, which belonged to “an alien clade,” not certainly related to later life forms. Readers will recall that fats (sterols) were recently recovered from a 558 million-year-old fossil entity, Dickinsonia, which was previously uncertainly classified but is now classified as an animal as a result. Read More…
Rob Sheldon: How we know the 558 mya animal Dickinsonia remains really contained fats
Recently, some readers asked whether the recent Dickinsonia fossil “fats” find from 558 mya featured cholesterol. Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon explains further: Cholesterol was not found by these researchers, nor did they make announcements of soft tissue in a fossil. What they did find were the breakdown products of cholesterol called “sterols”. Plants make Read More…
Fats recovered from Ediacaran fossil, 558 mya, shows that animals then were “large,” “abundant”
Yes, you read that right and our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon explains why it was possible below. From ScienceDaily: Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) and overseas have discovered molecules of fat in an ancient fossil to reveal the earliest confirmed animal in the geological record that lived on Earth 558 million years Read More…