Researchers say the site is rare as it includes fossils where soft tissue and complete organisms have been preserved, not just shells and bones.
The site, referred to as Castle Bank by researchers, dates from the Middle Ordovician, some 50 million years after almost all previously known examples of the same type which date back to the Cambrian Period .The discovery is important as it gives a fresh insight into how life evolved in this period, according to Dr Muir."It coincides with the 'Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event', when animals with hard skeletons were evolving rapidly," she said.
A strange, tube-dwelling animal with two long tentacles and a delicate lobe of soft tissue, just 3.5mm tall, which is another from the Powys deposit The fossils found at Castle Bank include different types of worms, sponges, barnacles, starfish and a creature that may be distantly related to insects. The site was also home to the youngest known examples of unusual groups of animals that include opabiniids, creatures that had a proboscis that looks like a vacuum cleaner tube.
Another creature they found was the wiwaxiid, a strange oval-shaped mollusc with a soft underbelly and a back covered with rows of leaf-shaped scales and long spines.Places where soft-bodied fossils can be found are extremely rare and only one other site from the period in Morocco preserves them to this level of detail.
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