Shocked with half a billion year old mummy intact as if it died yesterday in China

The world's best natural mummy has been found in South China, perfectly preserved in three dimensions despite dying at least 540 million years ago.

It was a specimen that could be considered the "ancestor of all species" - named Protocodium sinense , the first and oldest green algae from the Ediacaran period (635-539 million years ago) .

The specimen, excavated from the Dengying Formation in Shaanxi Province, southern China, was preserved in three dimensions, allowing paleontologists to explore its internal structure with unprecedented precision.

Close-up of the appearance and cross-section of the world's most amazing "mummy" - (Photo: BMC Biology).

This is a diamond discovery for paleontologists, because finding fossils of a soft tissue type alone is difficult, finding one preserved in detail down to the subcellular level, like an elaborate mummy and untouched by time, is an unparalleled discovery.

Sci-News quoted lead author Dr. Cédric Aria from the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museums - Canada: "The discovery touches on the origins of the entire plant kingdom and lays the foundation for organisms before the Cambrian explosion more than half a billion years ago, when the world's first modern ecosystems emerged."

These strange algae are tiny spherical bacteria about 0.5 mm in diameter , resembling large grains of pollen, covered with countless tiny dome-shaped scales.

Thanks to 3D examination, Dr. Aria and colleagues determined that the dome-shaped surface was part of a single, complex cell containing thin filaments called siphons . This morphology is typical of some modern single-celled marine algae that contain multiple nuclei.

Detailed images of the structure of a perfectly preserved primitive organism - (Photo: BMC Biology).

Aside from its tiny size, Protocodium sinense looked identical to modern Codium, a green algae found in many seas around the world.

From an evolutionary perspective, green algae such as ancient Protocodium sinense and land plants share a common ancestor that is thought to be around 1-1.5 billion years old. However, this primitive bacterial 'mummy' with many characteristics very similar to the modern group pushes back the history of the entire plant kingdom.

Not only that, it is also a "living fossil" according to Dr. Aria: "It can be said that it has remained practically unchanged for at least 540 million years. With the Ediacaran period, evolution has directed it to a stable adaptive zone, it is very comfortable and moreover, quite successful. Today Codium still takes advantage of that in global competition with other algae."

The study was recently published in the scientific journal BMC Biology.

•