First glowing animals lit up the oceans half a billion years ago

Family tree of ‘octocorals’ pushes origin of bioluminescence back to 540 million years ago, when the first animal species developed eyes.

Originally published by Freda Kreier, Nature, on 24 April 2024


A bioluminescent octocoral, Iridogorgia magnispiralis.Credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Deepwater Wonders of Wake

Some 540 million years ago, an ancient group of corals developed the ability to make its own light1.

Scientists have previously found that bioluminescence is an ancient trait — with one group of tiny crustaceans first making their own light an estimated 267 million years ago. But this new finding pushes back the origins of bioluminescence even further by around 270 million years.

“We had no idea it was going to be this old,” says Danielle DeLeo, an evolutionary marine biologist at Florida International University in Miami, who led the study, which was published on 24 April in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “The fact that this trait has been retained for hundreds of millions of years really tells us that it is conferring some type of fitness advantage.”

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