Overview
- A peer‑reviewed paper in Scientific Reports published this week analyzed more than 100 Spriggina floundersi fossils and found roughly twice as many specimens bent one way in the rock, which corresponds to a rightward bend in the living animal.
- The team combined new bed‑level excavations at Nilpena in South Australia with museum specimens to measure body curvature and to test whether currents, storm burial or drying could explain the pattern.
- Researchers report the orientation and variation of specimens ruled out major taphonomic causes because individuals on the same bedding surfaces show different directions and degrees of bending.
- Lead author Scott Evans and coauthors interpret the roughly 2:1 bias as population‑level handedness and infer that Spriggina likely had coordinated muscle control and some form of nervous‑system organization, though commentators urge caution because posture is an indirect proxy.
- The result suggests key animal traits—bilateral symmetry, mobility, and left‑right behavioral asymmetry—were present in the Ediacaran and may have provided a foundation for greater diversification in the later Cambrian.