Oldest swimming jellyfish species identified from rare 505 million-year-old fossils
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Rare 505 million-year-old fossil remains have led to the discovery of a new species of the world's oldest swimming jellyfish.
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), which led the examination of the fossils, has named the ancient species Burgessomedusa phasmiformis.
This newly recognized species' fossil was discovered at the Burgess Shale, a well-known fossil location in Canada. Desmond Collins, a former ROM Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology, found it in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The examination of the fossils
The fossil examination revealed that the species belongs to clade medusozoans.
This clade is well-known for creatures, such as cnidarians, with a medusa in which a body is structured like an umbrella, also known as a free-swimming body form. Modern box jellies, hydroids, stalked jellyfish, and genuine jellyfish are all members of this lineage.
The identification of this characteristic in a Burgessomedusa fossil suggests that huge swimming jellyfish with typical saucer or bell-shaped bodies evolved more than 500 million years ago.
Compared to modern-day jellyfish, Burgessomedusa would have been able to swim freely, and tentacles would have allowed it to easily capture large prey.
“Although jellyfish and their relatives are thought to be one of the earliest animal groups to have evolved, they have been remarkably hard to pin down in the Cambrian fossil record. This discovery leaves no doubt they were swimming about at that time,” said Joe Moysiuk, co-author and a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, based at ROM, in an official release.
Rare jellyfish find
Finding fossil remnants of delicate jellyfish, which are almost 95 percent water, is extremely rare – and on top of that, one that is millions of years old.
Fortunately, the Burgessomedusa fossils were discovered in remarkably good condition at the Burgess Shale location.
According to the study, the Cambrian food chain was significantly more intricate than previously assumed. It was thought that during the Cambrian age, the predation was confined to huge swimming arthropods such as Anomalocaris. This new study, however, alters this understanding.
“Finding such incredibly delicate animals preserved in rock layers on top of these mountains is such a wonderous discovery. Burgessomedusa adds to the complexity of Cambrian food webs, and like Anomalocaris which lived in the same environment, these jellyfish were efficient swimming predators,” said Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM’s Richard Ivey curator of invertebrate paleontology.
“This adds yet another remarkable lineage of animals that the Burgess Shale has preserved chronicling the evolution of life on Earth.”
The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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