JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THESE THINGS

An image of a prehistoric scene. various standing biota resembling broad leafs with ribs, jellyfish on stalks, seaweed, and limpits are scattered around the sand in the foreground. The background is barren but for the ocean surface far above.

Theyre called ediacaran biota and they fucking. Are Not Animals or Plants or even really anything were sure of. Actually i cant tel you what we think they were because there is NO consensus on what type of life they are. Some people think theyre protists, like, single celled life forms, some people think theyre fucking. Lichen???? which is its own bag of worms since lichen are such a complex topic by themselves. AND the other option is that they are litterally their own extinct kingdom of life. like holy shit thats wild. we dont really know much about them or how they like ate or reproduced or even where their energy comes from at all. The wikipedia page for them is so fuckng vague its wonderful. Not a single more definate descriptor than "maybe" or "it is possible that" is used for these fucking things. Theyre just called "biota" specifically because we cant classify them in any more detail how fucking wild is that shit.

Anyway cow tools looking ass organisms.

A low-resolution edited version of Gary Larson's Cow Tools comic. The tools are replaced with Ediacaran Biota. From left to right they resemble a bag with sticks on it, a frond that kind of looks like a butt plug at the bottom, a frycake or a donut, and a fan with three surfaces intersecting along a central stalk. The caption is Ediacaran Biota