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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(8/8) Check out the full study here www.nature.com/articles/s41...: to learn more, including the other ways Spriggina could move besides just bending. Thanks so much @alexboersma-art.bsky.social for the amazing animation in post #1!!

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(7/8) This preference is what biologists call behavioral lateralization, or handedness – found in everything from humans to insects today. Our study represents the oldest fossil evidence of an animal with this kind of preference, even before the evolution of hands!

Spriggina bent to the left from a fossil bed at NENP.

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(6/8) This suggests Spriggina was motile! But what we didn’t expect to find was about twice as many specimens bent to the left as fossils compared with those bent to the right. Because fossils are mirror images of living organisms, this suggests it preferred to bend to the right in life.

Bar graph illustrating the bend directions observed in Spriggina, with about twice as many bending to the left in fossils, compared with those bending to the right.

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(5/8) If Spriggina was bent by current or something that happened when it was buried, we would expect all specimens on the same bed to be bent in the same way. If instead it moved on its own, we would expect it not to care how the thing next to it moved and bend randomly – exactly what we found!

Map of bed 1T-FA at NENP with cartoons of Spriggina illustrating random body, bend and lift orientations for a community exposed to the same burial conditions.

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(4/8) A key to uncovering evidence of movement was excavated beds at NENP, layers of rock that record a single storm event that rapidly buried Ediacaran communities (like the one pictured here) preserving snapshots of the seafloor ~555 million years ago.

Fossil bed at NENP overlooking the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(3/8) So, we photographed, measured, and described as many as we could – more than 100 from the South Australia Museum and Nilpena Ediacara National Park (NENP) – that had been found in the 60+ years since it was first discovered to quantify evidence of movement

Graphs illustrating shape variation in Spriggina, including landmark and elliptical Fourier analysis.

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(2/8) Since it was first described in 1958 and named after famous South Australian paleontologist Reg Sprigg, people have noticed that many fossils of Spriggina are bent (like the one pictured here), suggesting it might have been able to move, but no one had been able to test this hypothesis.

Fossil impression of Spriggina, an elongate fossil divided into repeated units and bent to the left midway down the long axis.

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

(1/8) For #FossilFriday – What can ~555-million-year-old fossils tell us about the earliest animal behaviors? Excited to share a new article with Blakely Webb, @chemosymbiosis.bsky.social, Bill Parker & @marydroser.bsky.social in Scientific Reports investigating evidence of motility in Spriggina

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Happy #FossilFriday from the invertebrate paleontology collections @amnh.org where the newest (and first!) fossil SLAB lab member, Postdoc Prescott Vayda, and Colorado College intern, Kevin Gallegos Hernandez, are investigating some strange creatures from the Devonian of Pennsylvania!

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

These fossils were found in the Mackenzie Mountains of Northwest Territories, Canada in significantly older and deeper water environments than the have been previously recognized, suggesting these earliest complex animals had a deep water origin linked to the stability of these environments

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fossilSLABlab.bsky.social @fossilslablab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

For the first time in North America we report classic members of the Ediacara Biota: from the flat, modular and motile Dickinsonia (pictured here) to the tubular, sexually reproducing Funisia to the possible early mollusk Kimberella and the eight-armed Eoandromeda

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