Spriggina floundersi worms that bent to the right are preserved as fossils that bend to the leftScott Evans/AMNH
A 555-million-year-old worm had a predilection for turning right, possibly indicating the oldest known example of handedness.
Although these worms lacked limbs and so couldn’t be considered left- or right-handed in the way that we understand, the development of a tendency to favour one side over another is evidence of an advanced nervous system.
It remains a feature of free-living mobile life today, but until this discovery, it wasn’t thought to have emerged until the Cambrian Period, which began around 541 million years ago.
Scott Evans at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and his colleagues analysed 100 fossil specimens of a small flatworm-like creature, Spriggina floundersi, collected in South Australia over recent decades.
