200 Million Years, Animal is preserved Slime Leech

Mucus leeches, allegedly types Hurudo medicinalis, preserve small animal belonging to the protozoan, Vorticella ie, for 200 million years. Discovery of one-celled fossils are rare and surprising scientists.

"Preservation is rare. Unusually soft animals became fossilized but quickly caught up in a medium that prevent unraveling," said Benjamin Bomfleur of the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas who did the research.

Vorticella is an animal the size of a human hair width. These animals live in the region today include Transantarika. Previously, the area where the micro fossils are part of the continent called Gondwana.

Vorticella has a locomotor cilia. In his day, it is a machine tool motion creatures capable. With the tool motion, Vortivella can move quickly, reaching 8 cm per second.

Bomfleur as quoted by LiveScience, Saturday (12/08/2012), outlining possible scenarios that small animals may be trapped in the mucus of leeches. Initially, leeches secrete mucus on the basis of water or trash in the river at that time. Furthermore, Vorticella moved closer bdan stuck.

"Mucus trap in such a way that the animal then deposited in the mud, then a layer of sediment over time we find 200 million years later," said Bomfluer who published the results of his research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According Bomfluer, terawetkannya soft animals over millions of years by the way is very rare. The only rival Vorticella is a worm fossil 125 million years old found in Svalbard.