Discovery of 508 Million-Year-Old Jellyfish Fossils in Western Canada

Paleontologists have discovered a 508 million-year-old jellyfish fossil that may be the oldest specimen of these gelatinous creatures ever found. According to Smithsonian magazine, this umbrella-shaped marine creature, when alive, had a diameter of about seven inches (approximately 18 centimeters) and more than 90 short tentacles. The fossil, found in the mountains of British Columbia in western Canada, proves that prehistoric jellyfish also floated above underwater rocks, using their tentacles to catch prey, just like modern jellyfish. Jellyfish are among the oldest living marine organisms. During the 1980s and 1990s, research teams from the Royal Ontario Museum searched for fossils of early animal life among the Burgess Shale layers, a sedimentary rock formation containing life dating back over 508 million years. These ancient layers are famous for containing fossils of soft-bodied and other bizarre creatures. According to Moiseyuk, a paleontologist, unlike many Burgess Shale fossils that have undergone multiple interpretations due to their unusual anatomy, 'these fossils are quite large and obvious, even when covered in mud.' Paleontologists almost immediately realized they had found an early jellyfish, but it took several years for the official description of the fossils to be completed, and now, after several decades, the latest identification results were published in the scientific journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B' on Tuesday, July 31. Moiseyuk and his research team have discovered a total of 182 fossils of this jellyfish species in the area.