A species that lived about 520 million years ago and was thought to be the oldest known bryozoan is instead a type of colony-forming algae, a new study proposes.
Bryozoans are filter-feeding, tentacle-bearing animals that live in apartment complex–like colonies attached to rocks, shells or other surfaces on seafloors or lake bottoms. Trouble is, some other animals and algae inhabit the same sort of modular construction. While Protomelission gatehousei was first described in 1993, scientists didn’t categorize it as a bryozoan until 2021.
Now, analyses of fossils even better preserved than those described previously show that the species may not have been a bryozoan after all, says Martin Smith,
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