Mistaken Fossil Rewrites History of Indian Subcontinent for Second Time

hubie writes:

What once appeared as a fossil of the primitive animal Dickinsonia turned out to be nothing more than a decaying beehive:

In 2020, amid the first pandemic lockdowns, a scientific conference scheduled to take place in India never happened.

But a group of geologists who were already on site decided to make the most of their time and visited the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters, a series of caves with ancient cave art near Bhopal, India. There, they spotted the fossil of Dickinsonia, a flat, elongated and primitive animal from before complex animals evolved. It marked the first-ever discovery of Dickinsonia in India.

The animal lived 550 million years ago, and the find seemed to settle once and for all the surprisingly controversial age of the rocks making up much of the Indian subcontinent. The find attracted the attention of The New York Times, The Weather Channel and the scientific journal Nature as well as many Indian newspapers.

Only, it turns out, the "fossil" was a case of mistaken identity. The true culprit? Bees.

University of Florida researchers traveled to the site last year and discovered the object had seemingly decayed significantly - quite unusual for a fossil. What's more, giant bee's nests populate the site, and the mark spotted by the scientists in 2020 closely resembled the remains of these large hives.

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