Newfoundland fossil find shows first muscle-flexing animal on Earth

Scientists say they may have uncovered the oldest fossilized traces of animals with muscles in Newfoundland’s Bonavista Peninsula – which date back an astounding 560 million years.

According to the newly published study, the ancient rock impression of bundles of muscle fibres comes from primitive sea creatures that belong to the Cnidarian group of animals that include corals, sea anemones and jellyfish.

The new fossil, named Haootia quadriformis, dates from the Ediacaran Period – a rung in the ladder of geological time that spanned from 635 to 541 million years ago when complex, multi-cellular life began to flourish.

What clued the research team on this unique treasure was the four-fold symmetrical pattern of the muscle tissue clearly visible in the fossil. This tissue arrangement is something never before seen in any Cnidarians from this time period. In fact, it resembles features seen more in their modern descendants.

Until now, fossil records have led most researchers to believe that the initial explosion of animal life on Earth occurred during a time period known as the Cambrian Explosion, which started 541 million years ago. But this new discovery, which experts are calling an extremely surprising and rare find, may now change all that. We may now have to push back the time when the rapid evolutionary development actually started.

"However, in recent decades, discoveries of preserved trackways and chemical evidence in older rocks, as well as molecular comparisons, have indirectly suggested that animals may have a much earlier origin than previously thought," said lead author of the study, Alex Liu of Cambridge University, in a press statement.

"The problem is that although animals are now widely expected to have been present before the Cambrian Explosion, very few of the fossils found in older rocks possess features that can be used to convincingly identify them as animals," said Liu. "Instead, we study aspects of their ecology, feeding or reproduction, in order to understand what they might have been."

Evolutionarily speaking, muscles were critical, as they are specialized tissues that make it possible for animals to flex and move their bodies.

Fossilized meat from fish was unearthed in Australia back in 2007 – the oldest vertebrate tissue known.

"The evolution of muscular animals, in possession of muscle tissues that enabled them to precisely control their movements, paved the way for the exploration of a vast range of feeding strategies, environments, and ecological niches, allowing animals to become the dominant force in global ecosystems," Liu said.

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