annelids,
arthropods,
bilaterian animals,
Buddenbrockia plumatellae,
burrowing,
Cambrian Explosion,
Cambrian News,
China,
cnidarians,
Deuterostomia,
Ediacaran animals,
Evolution,
Germany,
habitus,
Helminthoidichnites,
Ikaria wariootia,
incertae sedis,
microbial mats,
mortichnia,
Nephrozoa,
PNAS,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Protostomia,
Scyphozoa,
South Australia,
UC Riverside,
University of California,
Xenacoelomorpha,
Yilingia spiciformis
For my series of articles about alleged Ediacaran animals predating the Cambrian explosion there is a new candidate that deserves a closer view: New research on Ediacaran fossils was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team of scientists from UC Riverside (Evans et al. 2020), and it has already made global news headlines including, “Ancestor of all animals identified in Australian fossils” (University of California 2020) and the even more sensational, “Fossil hunters find evidence of 555m-year-old human relative” (Davis 2020). What did those scientists discover and are their far-reaching conclusions really justified? Grains of Rice The authors of this study looked at fossil layers from the National Heritage Nilpena site in the Flinders Range of South Australia, which are slightly older than…