The creatures looked very peculiar - their limbs, or "arms," or tentacles, had a circular shape, very reminiscent of how children depict the sun, or a "spinner" - a cardboard or paper brightly colored children's toy fixed at one end of a short stick. In the wind, this toy began to spin
Chinese scientists from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Academy of Sciences of the PRC, together with colleagues from Australia, were able to confirm; the once existing connection between South China and South Australia in the Ediacaran period of the Earth's development, when they formed the constituent parts of a supercontinent called Gondwana.
This, according to the British scientific and educational TV channel, indicate that they discovered very unusual, which lived more than 300 million years ago in the oceans, long before the appearance of dinosaurs, "eight-pointed" creatures, whose fossilized remains and impressions on stones were found by paleontologists as in the black shales of the south China, and in the quartz rocks of southern Australia.
The creatures looked very peculiar - their limbs, or "arms," or tentacles, had a circular shape, very reminiscent of how children depict the sun, or a "spinner" - a cardboard or paper brightly colored children's toy fixed at one end of a short stick. In the wind, this toy began to spin.
For the first time, Chinese and Australian scientists were able to establish this connection two years ago, when, during a scientific conference, they exchanged photographs of the mysterious "eight-pointed" creatures they found, which received the Latin name Eoandromeda octobrachiata. The finds date back to the period 541-635 million years ago.
Paleontologists immediately went to the place of their discovery - Flinders Ranges in South Australia and Venhuey in China to make sure that the fossils are identical. They collected seven such fossils and 31 footprints from the excavation sites. The corresponding findings and photos of fossil creatures are published in the November issue of the journal Geology.
There is no doubt that these unusual and one kind of creatures had precisely many limbs, or, if you prefer, "hands", since they are perfectly preserved.
The "arms" were bent in a circle, were located close to each other, but did not join.
Scientists believe that these creatures had a soft dome-shaped body and lived on the bottom of the seas and oceans, feeding on the absorption of nutrients dissolved in the water, formed in the bottom systems.
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Moreover, if some scientists previously attributed these creatures to lower fungi or lichens, then this group of researchers came to the conclusion that the discovered Ediacaran fossils were an extinct species of diploplastics, that is, animals that had two germ layers of ecto- and endotherm. A jelly-like substance separated their two layers of cells.
Such creatures still live on Earth - these are jellyfish, corals and sea anemones, which are characterized by radial symmetry, but they do not have complex organs.
Diploblastic "multi-armed" organisms, which were the earliest life forms on the planet, disappeared somewhere around 542 million years ago.
