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.
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