A new species that survived a mass extinction half a billion years ago was discovered in a quarry in China

About 100 species survived the mass extinction half a billion years ago were found in a small area Chinascientists revealed on Wednesday.

The wealth of fossils provides a rare glimpse into the cataclysmic event that brought an abrupt end to the greatest explosion of life in our planet’s history.

The site where the remains were found in the southern Chinese province of Hunan was “strange,” Han Zeng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told AFP.

“We collected more than 50,000 fossils in one quarry that is 12 meters high, 30 meters long and 8 meters wide,” added the lead author of the new study in the journal Nature.

In this small space, the Chinese team discovered more than 150 different species – 91 of which are new to science – between 2021 and 2024.

Han described the “amazing experience when we realized that those animals were there on the rock.”

“Many fossils reveal soft parts including intestines, intestines, eyes and even nerves,” he added.

Among the species found were ancient relatives of worms, sponges and jellyfish.

They also found many arthropods – the family that includes crabs and modern insects – including eyed creatures called. radiodonts which were prey animals at that time.

The discovery is of particular interest to scientists because of the era in which these strange animals lived.

Evolution’s big bang

Life first appeared on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago – but it was little more than a layer of slime for most of our planet’s history.

Then came the The Cambrian explosion, known as the “big bang” of evolution, about 540 million years ago. Suddenly, most of the major groups of animals alive today – including vertebrates that would eventually include humans – emerged and began to populate the world’s oceans.

This explosion of life is thought to be driven by the increase in oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.

However, it came to an abrupt end when half of all animals died 513 million years ago. This mass extinction, known as the Sinsk event, is thought to have been caused by a drop in oxygen levels.

The animals in the Chinese quarry, dated to about 512 million years ago, represent the first discovery of soft-bodied fossils that lived after the Sinsk event, Han explained.

This means the remains – called Huayuan biota after the region where they were found – “open a new window on what happened,” he added.

“We were surprised”

Michael Lee, an evolutionary biologist at the South Australian Museum who was not involved in the research, said “the new fossils from China show that the Sinsk event greatly affected shallow water forms.”

A fish was called from deep water the coelacanth it similarly survived the mass extinction that wiped out all the dinosaurs that didn’t evolve into birds, he pointed out.

“The deep sea is one of the most stable places on Earth, in the same way that the basement is affected by daily and seasonal changes and has less temperature fluctuations than the attic,” Lee told AFP.

Han said his team was also surprised that some of the animals in the quarry were also found in Canada Burgess Shale area, dating back to the early Cambrian period.

This suggests that these animals were able to travel long distances on earth at this early stage, he added.

“We were surprised to find the Huayuan biota shares a variety of fauna with the Burgess Shale, including the arthropods Helmetia and Surusicaris that were previously only known from the Burgess Shale,” Zeng told Reuters. “Since larval stages are common in extant marine invertebrates, the best explanation for this shared taxon would be that early animal larvae were able to spread by ocean currents from the earliest Cambrian animals.”

The Sinsk event is not considered one of the “Big Five” known mass extinctions in the history of our planet.

Han said there is evidence of 18 or more mass extinctions in the past 540 million years, calling for more attention to be paid to the most devastating events.

Scientists have long argued that dinosaurs were on the decline before the an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, causing the mass extinction. Recent research suggests that there were dinosaurs it still thrives in North America before the asteroid hit.

A research team in 2019 found that the steroid strike ignited a chaotic day of fires, earthquakes and tsunamis, leading to a long period of global cooling.