News Paleontology

310-million-year-old fossil blobs might not be jellyfish after all

Scientists looked at the fossils from a fresh perspective and found a surprise

An illustration of several Essexella sitting on the ocean floor.

An ancient animal called Essexella may have been a type of burrowing sea anemone with a barrel-shaped body (illustrated), not a jellyfish as some scientists thought.

Julius Csotonyi

By Meghan Rosen

What do you get when you flip a fossilized “jellyfish” upside down? The answer, it turns out, might be an anemone. 

Fossil blobs once thought to be ancient jellyfish were actually a type of burrowing sea anemone, scientists propose March 8 in Papers in Palaeontology.