''Bicellum brasieri'' is a fossil holozoan. It is about 1 billion years old and could be the oldest example of complex multicellularity in the evolutionary lineage leading to the animals. It was discovered in 2021, and is named posthumously after the late palaeontologist

Martin Brasier Martin David Brasier FGS, FLS (12 April 1947 – 16 December 2014) was an English palaeobiologist and astrobiologist known for his conceptual analysis of microfossils and evolution in the Precambrian and Cambrian. He was Professor of Palae ...

, who was a co-author of the paper that first described it.

Fossil site

''Bicellum'' was found in sediments from the

Diabaig Formation Diabaig ( gd, Dìobaig) is a remote coastal fishing and crofting township in Wester Ross, in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. Diabaig lies on the north shore of the sea loch of Loch Diabaig, an inlet off the north side of Loch Torridon, a ...

in Loch Torridon, Scotland. The Diabaig Formation, considered to represent an ancient lake deposit, was already known to preserve the first non-marine

eukaryote Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bacte ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q106730787 Holozoa Fossils of Scotland Protists described in 2021 Fossil taxa described in 2021