Oldest Animal: Fossilized While Hatching

Posted by michael on Tuesday November 2, 2004 @09:39AM from the sole-purpose-of-your-life-is-to-serve-as-an-example dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Thousands of 600 million years old embryo microfossils have been found in China that may be among the first animals. It is a case of preserving the seemingly unpreserveable. The Precambrian coral-like animals seem to have spiral patterns that show some were preserved at the moment of hatching, according to the researchers: 'These organisms lived 600 million years ago -- before big animals. This would be the very first moment of animal evolution preserved in the fossil record.'"

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Re:Wish I had some concept of the size by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-02 10:52 · Score: 3, Informative

If anything, the smaller a fossil is, the more likely it is to survive. And, with micromanipulators, we can slice anything open these days, down to individual cells.
Re:Wish I had some concept of the size by Quelain · 2004-11-03 05:09 · Score: 2, Informative

TFA says 70 - 500 microns (1mm = 1000 microns).

They were 'sliced' with digital x-ray tomography:

http://www.microphotonics.com/skymto.html
http: //hhmi.genetics.utah.edu/microct/

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