Overview
- A peer-reviewed paper published July 9–10 in Scientific Reports analyzed more than 100 Spriggina floundersi fossils and found roughly twice as many leftward rock impressions, which as mirror images indicate rightward bending in life.
- The team measured bend angles across well-preserved Nilpena beds and museum collections and tested taphonomic explanations, concluding the pattern is unlikely to result from currents, storm burial, or drying.
- Authors interpret the population-level bias as behavioral handedness that implies Spriggina could move and may have had coordinated left-right control, an inference the paper ties to possible nervous-system organization.
- Independent paleontologists have publicly endorsed the study's careful testing of alternatives while stressing that claims about neural complexity are indirect and need further evidence.
- If sustained by future work, the finding would push evidence for lateralized behavior and animal motility back into the Ediacaran and reshape when scientists place the origins of bilateral behavioral asymmetry.