An animal that has existed for 500 million years
Scientists say they have confirmed that baffling fossils that are more than 500 million years old are from an animal trail.
The fossils, which are called "Dickinsonia", the Australian National University scientists said it is the oldest fossil of an animal on Earth, and it lived twenty million years before any animal we know.
The fossils are imprinted in a rock and are ovals with inner lines, somewhat looking like a leaf imprint filled with veins.
The fossils were first recorded in 1947, and were found in Australia and Russia, and scientists have argued about the type of organism that left this imprint.
The animal described by Science magazine was 1.4 meters long and had a flat skeleton. It was difficult to date and study this animal earlier because the rock containing the fossil was affected by natural factors.
But the scientists were able to find organic materials the size of a microbe that they studied and found a concentration of 93 percent of cholesterol.
It is not clear when this creature lived, but some of its fossils are 558 million years old.
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