{"id":566769,"date":"2026-08-12T14:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/566769\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T14:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:04:16","slug":"did-poop-enable-the-evolution-of-complex-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/566769\/","title":{"rendered":"Did poop enable the evolution of complex animals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe advent of fecal pellets,\u201d wrote Kimming and Bicknell, \u201cprovided an additional source of organic carbon, as well as iron, nitrogen, and phosphorus, to deeper waters. \u2026 In this framework, fecal pellets significantly boosted support for marine animal life and possibly supported the diversification and increased Cambrian biomass.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n \"Macroscopic
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

This coprolite still contains remnants of an unlucky trilobite, dating to somewhere between 520 and 506 million years ago in what\u2019s now Australia.<\/p>\n

\n Kimming and Bicknell 2026\n <\/p>\n

\n This coprolite still contains remnants of an unlucky trilobite, dating to somewhere between 520 and 506 million years ago in what\u2019s now Australia.<\/p>\n

Kimming and Bicknell 2026<\/p>\n


\n \"Macroscopic
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

This 520-506-million-year-old coprolite from what\u2019s now Greenland contains some shell fragments. All things shall pass.<\/p>\n

\n John Peel\n <\/p>\n

\n This 520-506-million-year-old coprolite from what\u2019s now Greenland contains some shell fragments. All things shall pass.<\/p>\n

John Peel<\/p>\n


\n \"\"
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Macroscopic coprolite preserving shell fragments and organic matter from the Wulongqing Formation (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4) Yunnan Province, South China. YPM IP 421925. <\/p>\n

\n Kimming and Bicknell 2026\n <\/p>\n

\n Macroscopic coprolite preserving shell fragments and organic matter from the Wulongqing Formation (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4) Yunnan Province, South China. YPM IP 421925. <\/p>\n

Kimming and Bicknell 2026<\/p>\n

\n This 520-506-million-year-old coprolite from what\u2019s now Greenland contains some shell fragments. All things shall pass.<\/p>\n

John Peel<\/p>\n

\n Macroscopic coprolite preserving shell fragments and organic matter from the Wulongqing Formation (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4) Yunnan Province, South China. YPM IP 421925. <\/p>\n

Kimming and Bicknell 2026<\/p>\n


\n \"Macroscopic
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

This 520-506-million-year-old coprolite from what\u2019s now Nevada looks more like familiar, modern poop, with a distinctive pellet shape.<\/p>\n

\n Kimming and Bicknell 2026\n <\/p>\n


\n \"\"
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Macroscopic coprolite preserving unidentified organic matter from the Paseky Shale Member, Hol\u0161iny-Ho\u0159ice Formation (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4), Czech Republic. I261. <\/p>\n

\n Petr Kraft\n <\/p>\n


\n \"Spreiten-burrows
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

These coprolites are arrayed around the exit of a burrow at the Raven\u2019s Throat River site, suggesting they may have been the work of the burrowing creature.<\/p>\n

\n Kimming and Bicknell 2026\n <\/p>\n


\n \"Phosphatic
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

These microscopic pellets of poo are rich in phosphate. They were dropped by an unknown defecator 520-506 million years ago in what\u2019s now Greenland.<\/p>\n

\n John Peel\n <\/p>\n


\n \"Phosphatized
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

More phosphate-rich fecal pellets, this time from what\u2019s now China, seen under an electron microscope.<\/p>\n

\n Xi-guang Zhang\n <\/p>\n


\n \"(K)
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

This phosphate-rich microscopic poop from Cambrian China is made up mostly of bits of shell.<\/p>\n

\n Xi-guang Zhang\n <\/p>\n


\n \"\"
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

This pair of carbon-rich coprolites came from what\u2019s now Canada. Note the difference in shape, suggesting they came from creatures with very different digestive tracts and probably different diets.<\/p>\n

\n Tom Harvey\n <\/p>\n

How defecation changed the world<\/p>\n

The first animals on Earth were mostly simple creatures that lived in the sunlit upper layers of the ocean or on the shallowest parts of the seafloor. Depending on which set of scientists you ask, those early animals were similar to either sponges or jellyfish<\/a>. Organs hadn\u2019t been invented yet, so \u201ceating\u201d just meant waiting for tiny particles of food, like bits of plankton or bacteria, to float into the only opening in the animal\u2019s body. Its cells would then engulf the food particle and break it down into its constituent molecules.<\/p>\n

What these early animals released back into the ocean were mostly just chemical byproducts of their cells\u2019 metabolism, not nutrients most other animals could use. So the deeper reaches of the ocean were largely unoccupied, because they didn\u2019t offer enough nutrients to keep animals alive. Digestive tracts and poop changed everything.<\/p>\n

By around 580 million years ago, some animals had started to evolve simple organs. Suddenly, these animals could swallow macroscopic chunks of food and digest them in their very simple\u2014but still revolutionary!\u2014guts, outside their cells, which probably really scandalized the sponges. That meant animals could eat more at a time, to support more complicated bodies, but it also meant they needed to dump the parts they couldn\u2019t digest or absorb. Hence the advent of poop.<\/p>\n

So far, paleontologists have unearthed Cambrian coprolites from about 35 sites around the world, spanning a period from around 540 to 494 million years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey range from microscopic to several centimeters in size and include forms such as elongated, cylindrical, ellipsoid, circular, and \u2018exploded\u2019 fecal \u2018carpets,\u2019\u201d wrote Kimming and Bicknell, rather evocatively. Some of the larger coprolites contain bits of shell or exoskeleton, revealing a bit about the diets of whatever produced them. The sheer diversity of the size and shape of all that fossilized feces suggests that the animals that produced it must also have been diverse (although scientists haven\u2019t yet managed to match very many Cambrian fossil animals to the corresponding coprolites).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe advent of fecal pellets,\u201d wrote Kimming and Bicknell, \u201cprovided an additional source of organic carbon, as well…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-566769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}