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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Bizarre early life forms ate better when they ate together

Simulations in a virtual flume tank suggest that primitive vase-shaped organisms were filter feeders.
Artistic reconstruction of a gregarious community of Ernietta

Open wide: some simple organisms (artist’s impression) adopted group living more than 540 million years ago. Credit: Dave Mazierski

Strange, soft primordial organisms that lived more than half a billion years ago thrived with a little help from their friends — providing one of the oldest examples of one living thing reaping benefits from another.

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Nature 570, 418 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01935-8

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