Myxomitodes

Myxomitodes, whose name means slime thread like, is a genus of problematic trace fossil, meaning it records the activity of an organism rather than its body, from the Paleoproterozoic-age Stirling Range Formation of Western Australia, roughly 1.9 billion years old. The markings appear as irregular trails on bedding surfaces, short in length, tapering at one end and forming a bulbous structure at the other, superficially resembling animal trails. Its biological origin remains disputed: it has variously been interpreted as the trail of a soft-bodied worm-like animal, a trace left by wind-blown bubbles, the track of a giant globular marine amoeba similar to the genus Gromia, or the trace of a land-dwelling, slime-mold-like organism, and its age makes it significant as very early evidence of a large, complex eukaryote.