Engineering: The 500 million-year-old jellyfish fossil

Fossil snapshots reveal evidence of oldest jellyfish ever found.

Researchers from the University of Kansas have discovered fossil ‘snapshots’ in rocks which are more than 500 million years old and reveal the existence of the oldest ever recorded jellyfish.
 
In a paper published in PLoS ONE, the authors describe four types of cnidarian fossils preserving traits that allow them to be related to modern orders and families of jellyfish. The specimens are 200 million years older than any other examples.
 
Paulyn Cartwright, one of the article’s authors, said: “The fossil record is full of circular shaped blobs, some of which are jellyfish. That’s one of the reasons the fossils we describe are so interesting, because you can see a distinct bell-shape, tentacles, muscle scars and possibly even the gonads.”

Demonstrate the rapid species diversification

Because of a film of fine sediment which the jellyfish left behind, the team found what resembles a picture of the animal. Ordinarily, as jellyfish are preserved in coarse sand, the image is not so clear.
 
The find also helps to demonstrate the rapid species diversification which happened roughly 540 million years ago when most animal groups first appeared in fossil records.
 

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