Exceptionally well-preserved fossils of tiny worms, starfish, sponges, barnacles and other creatures with no modern parallel discovered at a quarry in Wales are painting a picture of life on Earth 462 million years ago.
It was a critical time in the planet’s history when there was virtually no life on land, but animals and algae were thriving in the seas. The Castle Bank fossil site near Llandrindod Wells in Powys is remarkable because of the time period it captures and because the fossils show soft tissue such as eyes, nerves, the gut and brain that are preserved as films of carbon in mudstone, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday.
So at that point we knew it was going to be important,” he said. The fossils come from a period of time known as the Ordovician when life was becoming more complex. The earlier Cambrian period witnessed the origins of animals but by the end of the Ordovician period, Earth was home to more varied and diverse ecosystems. Most of the 170 animals discovered so far from the fossil site were tiny and many were either completely soft-bodied when alive or had a tough skin or exoskeleton.
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