Auroralumina attenboroughii

Described by its finders as the earliest known animal predator.

Our sources give no reliable size for Auroralumina attenboroughii, so this outline of its body shape is not drawn to scale.

When: About 560 million years ago
Where: Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire

A drawing of two linked tubes, like a pair of vases, with pink tentacles crowning the left one. — Auroralumina as the scientists who described it in 2022 reconstruct it: two cups on a shared stalk, with tentacles for catching food.Auroralumina attenboroughii reconstruction by F. S. Dunn, C. G. Kenchington, L. A. Parry, J. W. Clark, R. S. Kendall & P. R. Wilby, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized. This version is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 too.

Found in Charnwood Forest and announced in 2022, this 560-million-year-old fossil was described by the team who studied it as the earliest known animal predator. It had a skeleton and densely packed tentacles that waved in the water to catch passing food, much as corals and sea anemones do today.

It is related to the group that includes corals, jellyfish and anemones. That group was thought to appear in the Cambrian explosion, about 540 million years ago, so this fossil is about 20 million years earlier than expected. It is named after Sir David Attenborough, who hunted fossils in the same area as a schoolboy in Leicester.

Auroralumina attenboroughii: about 560 million years ago. That is 12% of the way back to the Earth’s birth.Periods from the ICS chart

Found in Britain. See where Britain was at the time in Britain’s journey.

Also in early animals

Charnia A frond-shaped living thing from the Ediacaran sea floor
Anomalocaris A Cambrian predator with huge compound eyes
Wiwaxia A small, spiny, scaly animal from the Burgess Shale

Sources

British Geological Survey, 560-million-year-old fossil is first animal predator