Oslo, Sept. 9 (SANA)Researchers have discovered a rarefossil of an animalthat lived around 560 million years ago in a sheep field in the Finnmark region of northern Norway, making it one of the oldest three-dimensionally preserved animal fossils discovered to date.

According to Phys.org, researchers from theUniversity of Cambridgefound the fossil, which dates to the Ediacaran period, a crucial interval in Earth’s history that witnessed the emergence of some of the earliest complex forms of animal life.

The fossil belongs to an organism known asCharnia, an ancient soft-bodied marine animal with a fern-like appearance.

Unlike most fossils of soft-bodied organisms from this period, which are typically preserved as flattened impressions in rock, the newly discovered specimen retained its three-dimensional structure. This unusual preservation allows researchers to examine anatomical details that are generally inaccessible in conventionalCharniafossils.

Scientists believe the organism was rapidly buried beneath thick layers of sediment on the seafloor around 560 million years ago. The burial process helped preserve its original shape during fossilization rather than leaving only the flattened impression commonly found in fossils of soft-bodied organisms.

The discovery is particularly significant because it represents the first confirmedCharniafossil found in Scandinavia, expanding the known geographical distribution of the ancient organism and suggesting that these early animals may have been more widespread than previously believed.

The fossil also provides researchers with a rare opportunity to investigate the three-dimensional anatomy of an organism that lived hundreds of millions of years before the emergence of many later animal groups.