News Animals

Glowing octocorals have been around for at least 540 million years

The findings push the earliest origin of bioluminescence back by nearly 300 million years

Strands of red coral with blue glowing tips

The bamboo octocoral Isidella (shown) can produce a bluish light. The origins of such bioluminescence in octocoral may be over half a billion years old.

Sönke Johnsen

By Jake Buehler

More than half a billion years ago, the deep, dark ocean was aglow with the eerie light of bioluminescent corals, new genetic and fossil analyses suggest. The findings push the origins of bioluminescence back by nearly 300 million years, researchers report April 24 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 

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