Overview
- The study, published Thursday in Science, catalogs more than 700 fossils from the Jiangchuan Biota in Yunnan that date to 554 to 539 million years ago.
- The finds place many animal groups long tied to the Cambrian at least about four million years earlier, into the late Ediacaran.
- The fossils are preserved as carbonaceous films, a rare soft‑tissue record that reveals fine anatomy and resembles Burgess Shale–style preservation.
- Researchers identify the oldest known deuterostome relatives, the broader group that includes vertebrates such as fish and humans, including forms allied to starfish and acorn worms alongside diverse bilaterian animals.
- Many specimens mix unfamiliar traits, pointing to a transitional community between Ediacaran and Cambrian faunas and setting up years of work to describe and test where these organisms fit.