Scientists Just Found a 97-Million-Year Magnetic Fossil, And It Points to a Lost Ocean Creature
The Daily Galaxy • • science
Key Points:
- Scientists discovered 97-million-year-old magnetofossils with magnetic properties indicating an extinct marine animal may have possessed an internal compass for sensing Earth’s magnetic field.
- Advanced magnetic tomography imaging revealed large, precisely arranged magnetic crystals inside the fossils, ruling out bacterial origins and suggesting a multicellular, magnetoreceptive creature.
- The fossils’ magnetic structures resemble those in modern migratory species with magnetoreception, hinting at early evolution of GPS-like navigation abilities in animals.
- Researchers used a novel 3D imaging technique at the Diamond Light Source facility to visualize the fossils’ internal magnetic configuration for the first time.
- Although the exact species remains unidentified, scientists speculate the animal could have been a migratory marine creature like
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