Paleontologists examining a museum collection have uncovered an extraordinarily rare, 450-million-year-old fossil that preserves the delicate soft tissues of an ancient relative of modern starfish. Dating back more than 200 million years before the appearance of dinosaurs, the specimen offers an unprecedented look at the internal anatomy, feeding mechanisms, and evolutionary adaptations of Earth’s earliest reef ecosystems. Researchers describe the find as a “one-in-a-million” preservation event that sheds new light on marine biodiversity during the Ordovician period.
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