World's Oldest Meal from Animal Ancestors 500 Million Years Ago Unearthed in Russia

The world's oldest meal was found by an international team of scientists inside the gut of one of our animal ancestors in the form of a 500-million-year-old fossil, according to a new study. These animals are called Ediacara biota and are reportedly the world's oldest large organisms dating back 575 million years ago. Australian researchers found the animals ate bacteria and algae from the ocean floor.

World's Oldest Meal

In the new paper published in the journal Current Biology on November 22, researchers from Germany, Russia, and Australia explored the gut contents and feeding strategies of Ediacaran animals by examining the biomarker of Ediacaran macrofossils. Such animals include the slug-like organism called Kimberella, which had a mouth, a gut, and can digest food like animals of today.

In the study, the world's oldest meal helped the research team led by the Australian National University (ANU) unravel the mystery behind our earliest animal ancestors. The contents of the last meal consumed by the ancient animals, which were known to roamed Earth over 550 million years ago, paved the way for new clues about the physiology of the animals.

In addition to Kimberella, the team in 2018 also retrieved Dickinsonia fossils from the steep cliffs near the White Sea in Russia, which is a remote part of the world home to bears and mosquitoes. Dickinsonia is another animal that grew up to 1.4 meters in length and had no eyes, mouth or gut. Instead, it absorbed food through its body while it navigates the ocean floor, based on the new research.

Cambrian Explosion Precedent

The said place in which our animal ancestors were discovered was during a time before the Cambrian Explosion, also known as the Cambrian radiation, the Biological Big Bang, or the Cambrian diversification.

In particular, the unique structure and symmetry of both Kimberella and Dickinsonia, which are part of the Ediacara biota family, lived on Earth around 20 million years prior to the Cambrian explosion.

Lead author Dr. Ilya Bobrovskiy, from GFZ-Potsdam in Germany, stated that their findings suggest the Ediacara biota animals, which lived before the Cambrian Explosion of modern animal life, were a mixed bag of weirdos but had some physiological properties similar to humans and other modern animals, as cited by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Evolution of Life

The Cambrian Explosion is considered by scientists to be a game-changer, in the perspective of evolutionary biology, since it allowed for the emergence of large animals like arthropods with legs and eyes, becoming some of the most feared and notorious predators over 500 million years ago.

This evolutionary event occurred about 570 to 530 million years ago, wherein all life was still aquatic, most animals were relatively small, and a number of animals had unusual body layouts, according to the Museum of Paleontology of the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).