An eight-armed creature that looked more like a modern party favor than a living animal colonized a large section of the world's oceans over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs emerged, suggests a new study.
The findings represent the first comparable animal fossils from the Ediacaran Period, 635 to 541 million years ago, which appear in two drastically different preservation environments -- black shale of South China and quartz rock of South Australia.

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