Uncovering The Enigma Of Our Earliest Animal Predecessors Through The World’s Oldest Meal
According to researchers from The Australian National University, the last meal that the first animals known to have lived on Earth devoured more than 550 million years ago has revealed fresh information about the physiology of our earliest animal relatives (ANU).
The world’s oldest big organisms, dating back 575 million years, are members of the Ediacaran biota. The animals were found to consume bacteria and algae that came from the ocean floor, according to ANU researchers. More information about these peculiar creatures, including how they were able to eat and digest food, is revealed by the findings, which were published in Current Biology.
The researchers examined prehistoric remains that still had phytosterol molecules—natural chemical compounds that are found in plants—from the animals’ final meal. The scientists were able to establish the Kimberella organism, which resembled a slug and had a mouth and gut, had a digestive system similar to that of current animals by analyzing the molecular residues of the food the animals consumed. It was probably one of the most developed Ediacaran species, according to the researchers.
The ANU team discovered another species that was less complex, had no eyes, mouth, or gut, and could grow up to 1.4 meters in length with a rib-like pattern imprinted on its body. Instead, as it moved across the ocean floor, the strange animal, known as a Dickinsonia, absorbed food via its body.
Both Kimberella and Dickinsonia are members of the Ediacaran biota family, which lived on Earth about 20 million years before the Cambrian Explosion, a significant event that fundamentally altered the evolution of all life on Earth. These organisms both have a structure and symmetry that is unlike anything that exists today.
According to Professor Jochen Brocks, a co-author of the study from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, algae are a valuable source of nutrients and energy and may have aided in Kimberella’s development.
The ANU scientists were able to collect and analyze the sterol molecules present in the prehistoric tissue using cutting-edge chemical analytical techniques. Since cholesterol is a characteristic of all mammals, the ANU team was able to prove that the Ediacaran biota is among our earliest known ancestors back in 2018.
The chemicals had distinctive characteristics that allowed the researchers to determine what the animals had consumed before they died. Differentiating between the fat molecules of the organisms themselves, the bacterial and algal remnants in their intestines, and the decomposing algal molecules from the ocean floor that were all preserved together in the fossils, according to Professor Brocks, was the challenging part.
In 2018, Dr. Bobrovskiy discovered the Kimberella and Dickinsonia fossils in Russia’s remote White Sea region, which is home to bears and mosquitoes.
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