First Animals to Flex Their Muscles
Fossils found in Newfoundland may preserve the first evidence of fibrous muscle tissue in an animal.A 560-million-year-old fossil, found in rocks on Newfoundland's Bonavista Peninsula, may be the oldest evidence of muscle tissue in an animal. The 15-centimetre-wide fossil shows bundles of fibres in a symmetrical arrangement, indicative of muscles being flexed. The animal would have been similar in appearance to a contemporary jellyfish, but attached to the sea floor on a stalk. Dr. Duncan McIlroy, a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, studied the fossil and determined that its age pushes the emergence of muscles in animals back much earlier than previously thought.
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