Early animals dethroned

Cell division in controversial fossils places them outside the animal kingdom

The oldest known “animal” fossils may have been living in the wrong kingdom. New images suggest that 570-million-year-old, many-celled blobs from China are not animal embryos as once thought, but rather some kind of spore-releasing cyst.

EARLY ANIMALS DETHRONED As seen with special imaging called X-ray microtomography, this 570-million-year-old gray blob turns out not to be an early animal embryo fossil, as long thought, but rather a spore-producing organism.