The Fossil Record of Animal Embryos, John Cunningham, University of Bristol

Embryos of invertebrate animals are small, soft and squidgy, so it was traditionally considered impossible for them to be preserved in the fossil record. However, a series of remarkable discoveries have shown that embryos can indeed be fossilized under exceptional circumstances. As these fossils come mainly from the interval during which the major animal groups first radiated, they have allowed palaeontologists to study the embryology of some of the earliest animals, shedding light on their development and evolution. I will describe work aiming to understand these fossils and their evolutionary significance using techniques ranging from high resolution tomographic analyses of fossils to experiments on the decay and preservation of modern relatives. I will discuss the embryo fossils known from the Cambrian and Ordovician periods as well as possible late Precambrian embryos, which are candidates for the oldest animals in the entire fossil record.

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