Weird Fossils Show Ancient Organism Reproducing

ananyo writes "Strange fossils from Doushantuo in China, have turned out to be 570-million-year-old snapshots of an organism caught in the act of reproducing. Researchers have used three-dimensional X-ray scanning techniques to see that the fossils contain nuclei-like structures — and one even has the dumb-bell shape of a modern nucleus about to replicate. The fossils have divided palaeontologists for over a decade. It now seems likely they are fossils of creatures similar to modern single-celled microorganisms called mesomycetozoeans that are neither animals nor bacteria."