PARIS, Jan 29 \u2014\u00a0Almost a hundred new animal species that survived a mass extinction event half a billion years ago have been discovered in a small quarry in China, scientists revealed yesterday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The treasure trove of fossils offers a rare glimpse into a cataclysmic event that brought a sudden end to the greatest explosion of life in our planet\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The site where the fossils were found in the southern Chinese province of Hunan was \u201cextraordinary,\u201d Han Zeng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have collected over 50,000 fossil specimens from a single quarry that is 12 metres high, 30 metres long and eight metres wide,\u201d added the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n
In this small space, the Chinese team uncovered more than 150 different species — 91 of them new to science\u2014between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n
Han described \u201cwonderful experiences when we realised that those animals were right there on the rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMany fossils show soft parts including gills, guts, eyes and even nerves,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Among the species discovered were ancient relatives of worms, sponges and jellyfish.<\/p>\n
They also found many arthropods\u2014a family that includes modern-day crabs and insects\u2014including spiny, stalk-eyed creatures called radiodonts which were the apex predator of the time.<\/p>\n
The discovery is particularly exciting for scientists because of the period when these strange animals lived.<\/p>\n
Evolution\u2019s big bang\u00a0<\/p>\n
Life first emerged on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago\u2014but was little more than a layer of slime for most of our planet\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Then came the Cambrian explosion, known as evolution\u2019s \u201cbig bang\u201d, roughly 540 million years ago.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, most of the major groups of animals alive today\u2014including vertebrates which would eventually include humans\u2014evolved and started populating the world\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n
This burst of life is thought to have been driven by a rise in oxygen in Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
However it came to a sudden end when up to half of all animals died off 513 million years ago.<\/p>\n
This mass extinction, known as the Sinsk event, is thought to have been caused by declining oxygen levels.<\/p>\n
The animals in the Chinese quarry, which were dated to around 512 million years ago, represent the first major discovery of soft-bodied fossils that lived directly after the Sinsk event, Han explained.<\/p>\n
This means the fossils\u2014dubbed the Huayuan biota after the county where they were found\u2014\u201copen a new window into what happened,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Safety in the cellar\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michael Lee, an evolutionary biologist at the South Australian Museum not involved in the research, said \u201cthe new fossils from China demonstrate that the Sinsk event affected shallow water forms most severely\u201d.<\/p>\n
A deep-water fish called coelacanth similarly survived the mass extinction that wiped out all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds, he pointed out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deep ocean is one of the most stable environments through geological time, in a similar way to how the cellar of a house is buffered from daily and seasonal changes and has less temperature fluctuations than the attic,\u201d Lee told AFP.<\/p>\n
Han said his team was also surprised that some of the animals in the quarry had also been found at Canada\u2019s Burgess Shale site, which dates from an early period of the Cambrian explosion.<\/p>\n
This suggests that these animals were already able to travel halfway across the world at this early stage, he added.<\/p>\n
The Sinsk event is not considered among the best-known \u201cbig five\u201d mass extinctions in our planet\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
However Han said there is evidence of 18 or more mass extinctions over the last 540 million years, calling for more attention to be paid to the immensely destructive events.<\/p>\n
Scientists have warned that Earth is currently going through another mass extinction\u2014this one caused by humans. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n
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