“A newly discovered group of 2.1 billion-year-old fossil organisms may be the earliest known example of complex life on Earth. They could help scientists understand not just when higher life forms evolved, but why.
The fossils — flat discs almost five inches across, with scalloped edges and radial slits — were either complex colonies of single-celled organisms, or early animals. Either way, they represent an early crossing of a critical evolutionary threshold, and suggest that the crossing was made necessary by radical changes in Earth’s atmosphere.
“There is clearly a relationship between the concentration of oxygen and multicellularity,” said Abderrazak El Albani, a paleobiologist at France’s University of Poitiers. The fossils are described June 30 in Nature. Single-celled organisms emerged from the primordial soup about 3.4 billion years ago. Almost immediately, some gathered in mats. But it was another 1.4 billion years before the first truly multicellular organism, called Grypania spiralis, appears in the fossil record.”
Read more at Wired (Thanks DG)
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Really interesting, thanks. I wonder how they functioned/moved, etc.? Time will tell
Very interesting, I’ve passed this link to a keen fossiler
is it just me of this multicellular life’ shape remind me of something….it must be me!!
I’m not sure if my mate is telling me porkies, but he said he’s got one of these & uses it as an ashtray !
As a collector, I would give my right ummm…ARM, for one of these things!