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Ancient Dickinsonia was definitely an animal


Still Waters

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It lived well over 550 million years ago, is known only through fossils and has variously been described as looking a bit like a jellyfish, a worm, a fungus and lichen. But was the 'mysterious' Dickinsonia an animal, or was it something else?

A new study by researchers at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, and the British Geological Survey provides strong proof that Dickinsonia was an animal, confirming recent findings suggesting that animals evolved millions of years before the so-called Cambrian Explosion of animal life.

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-mysterious-ancient-creature-animal.html

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With terms like "more than likely" I don't consider this "solved"  A good working theory but not solved.

Edited by paperdyer
fixed grammar
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Looks like a damn prehistoric plant leaf to me.

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If I remember correctly these lifeforms occurred before the Cambrian explosion and although they look bilaterally symmetrical like modern animals, the segments are alternate on either side of the midline. All the lifeforms from this period are very strange. 

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A good example of the scientific process is on display here. For those who dismiss scientific conclusions because they don't "feel" right, this is the level of rigor that is required to "know" something, even when the subject matter seems somewhat trivial.

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On 21/09/2017 at 2:53 AM, Sundew said:

If I remember correctly these lifeforms occurred before the Cambrian explosion and although they look bilaterally symmetrical like modern animals, the segments are alternate on either side of the midline. All the lifeforms from this period are very strange. 

They're sometimes known as the 'fractals because rather than just bilateral symmetry, it ran down to the component parts being little versions if the whole. And yes they were Precambrian, also known as the Ediacaran Fauna, after the Ediacara Hills in the Founders Range in South Australia, although the earliest example, and earliest example of complex Precambrian life is actually Charnia, found in Charnwood Forest, in England. By a boy who went to the same school as David Attenborough. 

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