Just when scientists thought they had almost figured out the origins of multicellular life, evolution throws another curveball.

In a serendipitous discovery, a team of researchers has just chanced upon a third type of ‘unconventional’ multicellularity that blends the two kinds we already knew about.

Multicellularity has evolved a staggering 45 times or more across the tree of life. Yet fundamentally, the ancestor of each multicellular lineage relied on just one of two methods — individual cells sticking together as they split, or individual cells that have previously split coming back together.