Palaeopascichnus

Palaeopascichnus is a genus of late Ediacaran body fossil made of a linear series of curved, lobe shaped modules, with larger specimens carrying up to forty lobes and reaching about 20 centimeters in length. First identified in 1976 in the Studenitsa Formation of Podolia, Ukraine, it has since been found widely across the East European Platform, South China, Siberia, Australia, Brazil, Oman, Romania and Avalonia, dating to roughly 580 to 542 million years ago. Long mistaken for a trace fossil left by a moving animal, it is now understood as a body fossil of an agglutinating organism, possibly related to foraminifera, and is counted among the oldest known skeletal macroscopic organisms.