Scientists have made an incredible discovery – a 155-million-year-old organism is capable of cloning itself. A study on the discovery said the starfish-like creature had 6 arms and could regenerate its body.
According to Science Alert, a fossil of one type was unearthed in 2018 from a limestone deposit in Germany that was once a deep lagoon filled with coral meadows and seaweed beds. The researchers said it was the only specimen of a new species of brittle star, named Ophiactis Hex.
Clonal fragmentation allowed the organism to create genetically identical offspring by breaking off parts of its own body and regrowing them—a process known as speciation.
“Although the biology and ecology of clonal fragmentation are relatively well understood, little is known about the evolutionary and geological history of the phenomenon,” Dr. Ben Thuy, a paleontologist at Luxembourg’s Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, wrote in the new paper.
This is significant because scientists do not know the exact time when the feature first appeared.
The 155-million-year-old fossil is so well preserved that all the hook-shaped arm spines are visible. It is named after a magical supercomputer from one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, capable of thinking the unthinkable.
“To the best of our knowledge, the model described in the current paper is only the second case known so far, and regeneration appears to be indeed linked to 6-fold symmetry and clonal fragmentation,” they added.
