Animal's Body Preserved for 425 Million Years

The remains of a tiny animal, preserved for 425 million years in rocks located in what is now the U.K., have just been discovered by an international team of researchers.

The creature -- related to crabs, lobsters and shrimp -- is an ostracod, or a type of crustacean sometimes known as seed shrimp. It represents a new species, Pauline avibella, in memory of the late wife of David Siveter, who led the research project.

The 0.4-inch-long animal was found, not only with its shell, but also with its soft parts -- body, limbs, eyes, gills and digestive system. Such well-preserved remains from that ultra prehistoric period are near unheard of in the fossil record.

"The two ostracod specimens discovered represent a genus and species new to science, named Pauline avibella," Siveter, of the University of Leicester Department of Geology, said in a press release. "The genus is named in honor of a special person and avibella means 'beautiful bird,' so-named because of the fancied resemblance of a prominent feature of the shell to the wing of a bird."

The discovery of the tiny shelled animal was made in Herefordshire, Welsh Borderland. The rocks at the site date to a time when southern Britain was a sea area on a small continent situated in warm, southerly subtropical latitudes. The ostracods and associated marine animals living there were covered by a fall of volcanic ash that preserved them frozen in time.

"Ostracods are the most abundant fossil arthropods, occurring ubiquitously as bivalved shells in rocks of the last 490 million years, and are common in most water environments today," Siveter said. "The find is important because it is one of only a handful preserving the fossilized soft-tissues of ostracods."

He continued, "The preservation of soft-parts of animals is a very rare occurrence in the fossil record and allows unparalleled insight into the ancient biology, community structure and evolution of animals - key facts that that would otherwise be lost to science."

As the image here shows, the fossils were reconstructed virtually, by using a technique that involves grinding each specimen down, layer by layer, and then photographing it at each stage. It took 500 such "slices" to create the image.

Read more at Discovery News