By Joe Pinkstone For Mailonline
Published: 20:00 GMT, 11 February 2019 | Updated: 08:58 GMT, 12 February 2019
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The world's first ever moving lifeform has been discovered in Gabon and dates back to around 2.1 billion years ago.
Scientists say the primitive creature was likely 'slug-like' and exhibited the earliest known signs of motility.
The fossil takes the earliest estimate of mobile multicelular organisms back from a previous guess of 570 million years ago to almost four times this, to when the planet was only half its current age.
The fossils are preserved in thin layers of rock and look like tubes with a consistent diameter of a few millimetres (pictured). The fossil takes the earliest estimate of mobile multicelular organisms back from a previous guess of 570 million years ago to almost four times this, to when the planet was only half its current age
An international team, coordinated by Professor Abderrazak El Albani, of the University of Poitiers in France, made the discovery in the black shales of the Paleoproterozoic Francevillian Group Fossil Formation in Gabon.
It was discovered by Professor El Albani's team and allowed scientists to re-date the appearance of multi-cellular life on Earth to 1.5 billion
