Humans’ closest invertebrate ancestors date back much further than thought – how we discovered the fossils that show this

By Luke Parry, Associate Professor of Palaeobiology, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford
Frankie Dunn, Senior Researcher of Natural History, Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford
Gaorong Li, China Scholarship Council Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford

Animal life is extraordinarily diverse and complex, having colonised almost all environments on Earth – from hostile hydrothermal vents in the deep sea to the skies across our continents.

But the planet was not always teeming with complex animal life. For the first 3.7 billion years after it originated, life was small, simple and largely confined to the oceans. This microbe-dominated world was a tumultuous place, with several major…

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