Smithsonian Magazine has a story about ancient jellyfish… fossilized jellyfish.  One of our favorite fossil localities, Mazon Creek, has abundant jellyfish fossils, but otherwise jellyfish are quite rare in the fossil record.  A recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B described a new jellyfish, Burgessomedusa phasmiformis, which hales from British Columbia, Canada.

Whether spotted pulsing under the waves or stranded on a sandy shore, jellyfish are a common sight on a trip to the beach. The soft-bodied animals are also a connection to the ancient past. Now, researchers have uncovered a 508-million-year-old fossil of a bygone jellyfish, possibly representing the oldest swimming jelly paleontologists have found.

In life, the umbrella-like animal, which paleontologists named Burgessomedusa phasmiformis in a new paper released Tuesday, was about seven inches across and draped with more than 90 short tentacles trailing beneath. Uncovered in the mountains of British Columbia, the fossil confirms that prehistoric jellies floated over reefs where their tentacles could capture prey swimming in the water column, just like living jellyfish.

“Sometimes in paleontology you know a great discovery as soon as it’s made in the field,” says Royal Ontario Museum paleontologist and study author Joseph Moysiuk.