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Earth’s Earliest Animals May Have Thrived Too Easily to Evolve

10 June 2026 at 20:25

Artist’s reconstruction of the Fractofusus community: the bottom right features a large Fractofusus around which there are 5 to 8 medium specimens clustered; each of the medium specimens also has small specimens clustered around them; the small specimens therefore form an independent double cluster pattern, namely clusters of clusters. Image credit: C.G. Kenchington.

Fossils from some of the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago (Ediacaran period), suggest that cloning, not competition, dominated the Ediacaran seas, slowing evolution until environmental stress helped drive the rise of sexual reproduction and a burst of biodiversity.

The post Earth’s Earliest Animals May Have Thrived Too Easily to Evolve appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Fossil Discovery in Patagonia Reveals New Species of Horned Turtle

Sci.News

By: Enrico de Lazaro

9 June 2026 at 22:31

An artist’s impression of Patagoniaemys aeschyli. Image credit: Nawel Vazquez / Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’ / CONICET.

Paleontologists have identified a new species of meiolaniform turtle from northern Patagonia, Argentina, that lived during the Maastrichtian age, just before the asteroid-triggered mass extinction that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs.

The post Fossil Discovery in Patagonia Reveals New Species of Horned Turtle appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.