US EditionFossils from China show complex life evolved millions of years earlier than once thought
The trove includes more than 700 fossils, with worms, cnidarian-like animals and ctenophore-like forms that suggest complex body plans appeared earlier.
- Researchers at the Jiangchuan Biota in Yunnan, China, excavated approximately 700 fossils between 2022 and 2025, revealing complex animal life existed between 554 million and 539 million years ago, at least 4 million years before the Cambrian.
- University of Oxford associate professor Ross Anderson, who coauthored the study published Thursday in Science, noted the site offers "Cambrian-like preservation in the Ediacaran," capturing delicate limbs, feeding structures, and internal organs rarely seen in ancient material.
- The assemblage includes six goblet-shaped specimens resembling Haootia, 56 wormlike fossils, and creatures resembling Herpetogaster, previously known only from the Cambrian. Fossils potentially represent deuterostomes, pushing back vertebrate ancestry to the Ediacaran.
- Harvard University associate Jo Wolfe said the findings are "blurring the boundaries between what are Ediacaran and Cambrian life-forms." Anderson added the Cambrian explosion remains unique for introducing unprecedented species diversification and new animal phyla.
- This study initiates a new phase of scientific investigation into these hundreds of fossils. Discoveries will likely prompt revisions to evolutionary timelines, challenging the consensus that complex animal body plans emerged only during the Cambrian.
70 Articles
70 Articles
Chinese fossils reveal a primordial burst of animal evolution
A remarkable assemblage of fossils from China is revealing that animal life diversified in Earth's primordial seas millions of years earlier than previously known, with an array of forms including ancient members of a group that eventually led to vertebrates including humans.
New fossil discovery sheds more light on evolution
WASHINGTON — Newly discovered fossils have given scientists their first real glimpse of when Earth made a crucial transition from plants and unrecognizably simple animals to the complex creatures that took over the world and would eventually lead to us.
They discover that complex animals emerged before the Cambrian explosion in China and one of the pillars of evolutionary biology is broken. Complex life did not appear suddenly, but much earlier than the known fossils indicated.
Fossils in China Push Back Origins of Animals by Millions of Years
Fossil of Archaeaspinus, a member of the Ediacaran biota. Credit: Masahiro Miyasaka / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China is pushing back the known origins of animals, offering new insight into how complex life first emerged on Earth. Researchers say the fossils show that many major animal groups evolved earlier than previously believed, before the start of the Cambrian Period. The findings suggest …
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