Did the live in pineapples?
Classically, sponges are colonies, not “individuals.”
Also, not sure fossilized is the right term.
Is this article written by a scientist or a “journalist”?
I don’t know if anyone realizes how HUGE this is, if true. Sponges are both sessile (stationary), and believed to be from an early shoot off the animal family tree from WAY before 99% of the major animal groups split off. This seems to mean one of three things, any of which is astounding:
1) These sponges learned evolved to move and feed completely independent of all other forms of life.
2) Ancestral sponges aren’t nearly as primitive as we thought, and these sponges retained some basal trait of the ability to move which all other sponges lost.
3) Ancestral sponges are as primitive as we thought, but all the sessile sponges are from one branch of the sponge family tree, and we just found another super-ancient branch older than any other known branch of the animal family tree (except maybe cnidaria, the branch that includes jellyfish.)
Oh, and what the heck:
4) The sequential complication of animals is all just a giant mind-mess from God, and he finally decided to let us see something wacky to start revealing himself in the most unusual way.
Yup. And their best friends are starfish.