- Oct 17, 2011
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A geologist may have uncovered the oldest sign of animal life on Earth: sponge fossils that potentially date back 890 million years. That’s some 350 million years earlier than the oldest undisputed findings of animal fossils.
Elizabeth Turner, a professor at Laurentian University in Ontario, chanced upon the fossilized structures in rock formations while doing field work as a graduate student in the country’s remote northwest more than two decades ago.
Examined under a microscope, the tiny sections of rock Turner uncovered contain a meshwork of three-dimensional structures — branching out in a distinctive way and rejoining — that closely resembles modern sponge skeletons.
Nature article
Elizabeth Turner, a professor at Laurentian University in Ontario, chanced upon the fossilized structures in rock formations while doing field work as a graduate student in the country’s remote northwest more than two decades ago.
Examined under a microscope, the tiny sections of rock Turner uncovered contain a meshwork of three-dimensional structures — branching out in a distinctive way and rejoining — that closely resembles modern sponge skeletons.
Nature article