Fossilized organisms found in 1.56 billion year old rock
12 replies, posted
[quote]Fossils of macroscopic eukaryotes are rarely older than the Ediacaran Period (635–541 million years (Myr)), and their interpretation remains controversial. Here, we report the discovery of macroscopic fossils from the 1,560-Myr-old Gaoyuzhuang Formation, Yanshan area, North China, that exhibit both large size and regular morphology. Preserved as carbonaceous compressions, the Gaoyuzhuang fossils have statistically regular linear to lanceolate shapes up to 30 cm long and nearly 8 cm wide, suggesting that the Gaoyuzhuang fossils record benthic multicellular eukaryotes of unprecedentedly large size. Syngenetic fragments showing closely packed ~10 μm cells arranged in a thick sheet further reinforce the interpretation. Comparisons with living thalloid organisms suggest that these organisms were photosynthetic, although their phylogenetic placement within the Eukarya remains uncertain. The new fossils provide the strongest evidence yet that multicellular eukaryotes with decimetric dimensions and a regular developmental program populated the marine biosphere at least a billion years before the Cambrian Explosion.
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[URL="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160506/ncomms11500/full/ncomms11500.html"]source[/URL]
not a news article but a scientific journal article, still found it quite interesting
Amazing. I wonder if we'll ever find out the origin of life on Earth
Sometimes I wonder if life just came to be through an extreme amount of luck and random chance.
[QUOTE=Kylel999;50379420]Amazing. I wonder if we'll ever find out the origin of life on Earth[/QUOTE]
I think we are going to have to keep exploring the solar system to find out, really. There are so many possible origins to life on Earth that I think one of the most important factor to be able to rule out is if life exists anywhere else in our system and wether it is related to life on earth or not.
Read as 'Fossilized orgasms'
[QUOTE=Erfly;50379444]Sometimes I wonder if life just came to be through an extreme amount of luck and random chance.[/QUOTE]
It seems like life on Earth came about pretty much as soon as a suitable environment existed (give or take a few million years). However for over a billion years it was super simple, single-cellular stuff. It's possible that life arising naturally is actually relatively common, but the evolutionary steps leading to multicellular organisms are extremely unlikely.
[QUOTE=Erfly;50379444]Sometimes I wonder if life just came to be through an extreme amount of luck and random chance.[/QUOTE]
By definition, yes.
God damn, 1.5 billion years is such a mindbogglingly long time ago. For reference, if we made a timeline between that point and today, and called it an hour, the dinosaurs died almost 2 and a half minutes ago, and the pyramids were built less than half a second ago
[QUOTE=Ziks;50379539]It seems like life on Earth came about pretty much as soon as a suitable environment existed (give or take a few million years). However for over a billion years it was super simple, single-cellular stuff. It's possible that life arising naturally is actually relatively common, but the evolutionary steps leading to multicellular organisms are extremely unlikely.[/QUOTE]
The most accepted theory right now is that life as we know it came from comets hitting early Earth. If this is the case, life is a LOT more common than we once thought.
[editline]23rd May 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=proboardslol;50379577]God damn, 1.5 billion years is such a mindbogglingly long time ago. For reference, if we made a timeline between that point and today, and called it an hour, the dinosaurs died almost 2 and a half minutes ago, and the pyramids were built less than half a second ago[/QUOTE]
Whatever the fuck that means. Such an arbitrary scale doesn't really help wrap my mind around something so unbelievably large.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;50379153][URL="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160506/ncomms11500/full/ncomms11500.html"]source[/URL]
not a news article but a scientific journal article, still found it quite interesting[/QUOTE]
I'm a fan, I think more people should start linking the actual journal article in addition to a news article, or even just the journal article itself if the abstract is accessible to the layperson.
[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;50379592]The most accepted theory right now is that life as we know it came from comets hitting early Earth. If this is the case, life is a LOT more common than we once thought[/QUOTE]
Panspermia is hardly the most widely accepted theory. There isn't even [i]a[/i] widely accepted theory at this point. It's all just conjecture.
Space exploration to find the origin of life is cool but so are deep geology experiments. Im surprised we dont have more of those, because there are a lot of unanswered questions about the conditions deep into the earths crust, and the last time we drilled down there we found some interesting surprises.
The deeper down you go the older the rock gets, and so too are the things you find in it.
[video]https://youtu.be/zz6v6OfoQvs[/video]
[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;50379592]The most accepted theory right now is that life as we know it came from comets hitting early Earth. If this is the case, life is a LOT more common than we once thought.
[/QUOTE]
Where have you read that?
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