Oldest Animal: Fossilized While Hatching

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.'"