New fossil find sheds light on the origins of animal life on Earth

An artist’s reconstruction of a deep-water paleocommunity. PIC COURTESY/Alex Boersma

Every animal alive today traces its ancestry back to a pivotal moment when complex life first emerged from a world dominated by simple microbes.

Yet the fossil record from this evolutionary turning point remains frustratingly sparse. Now, researchers have uncovered an exceptionally rich fossil site in Canada's Northwest Territories that could help fill some of those gaps.

The fossils, belonging to the enigmatic Ediacaran biota, reveal that some hallmarks of animal life, including movement and sexual reproduction, may have evolved 5 to 10 million years earlier than previously recognised.

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