An article published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution” describes a research on the communities formed by the so-called Ediacara biota, the beings that lived during the Ediacaran period. Paleontologist Simon A.F. Darroch of the Vanderbilt University and two colleagues applied a method of analysis developed for modern ecology to organisms of that period including some discovered in Namibia concluding that there was already an ecological complexity in some communities 570 million years ago.