New research has glint a luminosity on how the world ’s oldest large animals consumed and digested food . Animals from the Ediacaran period lived around 575 million years ago and by study the chemicals in their fossilise guts , scientist were able to discover their diet . For a slug - like animal know asKimberella , the team was able to lick out that they must have had a mouth and a gut , and digested food just like modernistic creature do .
KimberellaandCalyptrina , a 2-dimensional insect - like creature , apportion a mixed dieting of green algae and bacteria . Dickinsonia , another matted and stripy critter from eon ago that could grow up to 1.4 meters ( 4.6 feet ) , did not have a lip , so likely digest and absorb food outwardly instead .
“ Our finding suggest that the animals of the Ediacara biology , which lived on Earth prior to the ‘ Welsh Explosion ’ of modern animal lifetime , were a mixed bag of straight-out weirdos , such asDickinsonia , and more sophisticated creature likeKimberellathat already had some physiological properties standardized to humanity and other present - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. animals , ” conduce author Dr Ilya Bobrovskiy , from GFZ - Potsdam in Germany , said in astatement .
These fossils represent the oldest animal whose fossils are seeable to the naked eye . They are the antecedent of all the beast that exist on Earth today . Molecular analysis of the fossils is how it was confirm thatthese were animalsback in 2018 . Researchers witness cholesterin , the hallmark of us and all other animals in the world .
look for other molecules , the squad found other fat molecules that did not belong to to the ancient animals . They were instead molecules belonging to bacteria and algae that must have been eat as the last repast by this creature before it decease and became fossilize .
“ Scientists already knewKimberellaleft feeding mark by scrape off alga cover the ocean floor , which advise the animal had a catgut . But it was only after analyze the particle ofKimberella ’s gut that we were able-bodied to fix what exactly it was eating and how it digest solid food , ” added Professor Jochen Brocks , from Australian National University .
“ Kimberellaknew precisely which steroid alcohol were good for it and had an advanced fine - tuned catgut to sink in out all the rest . This was a Eureka moment for us ; by using preserved chemical substance in the fossils , we can now make gut contents of brute seeable even if the intestine has since long decay . We then used this same technique on eldritch fogy likeDickinsoniato figure out how it was feeding and find out thatDickinsoniadid not have a gut . ”
The cogitation was published in the journalCurrent Biology .
