You probably don’t think twice when you queue up at the grocery store or join a conga line at a wedding. But this type of single-file organization is a sophisticated form of collective social behavior. At least 480 million years, according to a study published on Thursday in Scientific Reports. “Probably, collective behavior developed very early among various groups of arthropods,” said Jean Vannier, a paleontologist at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in France, and the study’s lead author. The fossils represent some of the oldest evidence of collective synchronized behavior in animals.

Source: New York Times October 17, 2019 15:07 UTC