Researchers at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales found the fossils in rocks that were deposited under the sea more than 460 million years ago, at a time when what is now mid-Wales was covered by an ocean.
They stated that it is one of the very rare places where soft tissues and complete organisms are preserved, rather than just hard parts such as shells and bones.
Almost all the earlier examples date from the Cambrian period, but Castle Bank dates from the Middle Ordovician, about 50 million years later.
Dr. Muir said the discovery is important because it provides new insight into how life was evolving during this time.
„It coincides with the “Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event”, when animals with hard skeletons evolved rapidlyshe said.
Fossils of many different types of animals have been found at Castle Bank, and most were small – between 1mm and 5mm – and many had either a completely soft body when alive, or a hard skin or exoskeleton.
Places where such soft-bodied fossils are found are extremely rare and only one other Ordovician site in the world, Fezouata Biota in Morocco, preserves nearly this level of detail.
Specimens discovered
The fossils at Castle Bank include the youngest known specimens of unusual groups of animals, including the opabiniids with their vacuum cleaner-like proboscis and the wiwaxids, strange oval-shaped molluscs with a soft abdomen and a back covered in rows of scales. shape of leaves and long thorns.
At the same time, the site includes the earliest examples of more modern-looking animals, including a creature that looks almost like an insect and could be related to them.
– The findings were published in a paper, A Middle Ordovician Burgess Shale-type Fauna From Castle Bank, Wales (UK), in the journal Nature Ecology And Evolution.
The new fossils also include many different types of worms, sponges, clams, starfish and a primitive horseshoe crab.
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