Jochen Brocks

Scientists have been fighting for more than 75 years over what Dickinsonia and other bizarre fossils of the Ediacaran Biota were : giant single-celled amoeba, lichen, failed experiments of evolution or the earliest animals on Earth, the fossil fat now confirms Dickinsonia as the oldest known animal fossil.

The fossil fat molecules that we've found prove that animals were large and abundant 558 million years ago, millions of years earlier than previously thought.