Here is the astonishing creature found inside a 200 million-
year-old leech cocoon  It's pretty hard to find a fossil of
something that's completely squishy and tiny. Without bones or
exoskeletons, there's not a lot from many microorganisms that
gets preserved. But a 200-million year old cocoon has shown us a
glimpse at an ancient microorganism that looks incredibly
similar to some modern examples.  At Timber Peak in Antarctica,
a layer of well preserved plant fossils was discovered, and in
amongst the plant materials was a cocoon, possibly from a
Triassic leech. But what was special was what was inside the
cocoon: a well preserved example of a soft body microorganism —
something which rarely survives the ravages of time.
Intriguingly, the fossil looks incredibly similar to a modern
protozoa, the Vorticella campanula bell animal. The ancient
fossil is thought to be a "ciliate protozoan of the family
Vorticellidae", and the modern relatives of this microorganism
are incredibly common, and found in waterways aro