Quantcast
ZME Science
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Science Biology

We might have discovered the oldest animal fossils yet in the Canadian Northwest

Now we need to confirm that these were indeed sea sponges.

Alexandru Micu by Alexandru Micu
July 29, 2021
in Biology, News, Science
Reading Time: 3 mins read
A A
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterSubmit to Reddit

Geologists in Canada might have found the earliest evidence of life on Earth: fossilized sea sponges.

Image after Elizabeth C. Turner, (2021), Nature.

In the remote mountains of the Northwest Territories — an area reportedly only accessible by helicopter — geologist Elizabeth Turner has found the oldest evidence of animal life that we’ve ever come across. Since the 1980s, she has been excavating this area, which used to be a marine environment around one billion years ago. But after all those years of hard work finally paid off, as Turner reports finding the fossils of ancient sponges preserved in the sediments here.

Even better, they could be the oldest animal fossils we’ve ever found.

ADVERTISEMENT

Primeval sponges

The emphasis here is on ‘could be’. Thin sections of rocks recovered from the site contain three-dimensional shapes that are very similar to the structure of modern sponges. We’re not entirely sure that they are fossilized sea sponges right now.

What we do know, based on the dating of the rock layers the samples were retrieved from, is that they’re around 890 million years old. If we can confirm that these are actually fossils, they would be roughly 350 million years older than the oldest confirmed sponge fossils we’ve found so far.

Sponges, as one of the simplest types of animals out there, are widely considered to have been the first group of animals to evolve on Earth. If not the first, at least one of the first. Sponges lack nervous systems or muscles, and their cells work more like a collective of individuals rather than a single whole. That being said, however, they do have some definitory traits of simple animals, such as cells with differentiated functions and sperm.

ADVERTISEMENT

Still, that being said, there are still a lot of unknowns when talking about early life on Earth. Our hypothesis so far is that life emerged around 3.7 billion years ago, with the first animals likely making an appearance around 540 million years ago — sponges. However, geneticists using the molecular clock approach — which involves analyzing the rate of genetic mutation in a species to estimate where it likely diverged from its cousins — say that there are grounds on which  to assume that sponges emerged much earlier, likely around one billion years ago.

Sorry to interrupt, but you should really...

...Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

No physical evidence has been found in support of this last point so far, but if the samples unearthed by Turner are confirmed as being sponge fossils, they would go a long way towards validating it. As such, we can definitely expect researchers to thoroughly examine and debate Turner’s findings.

The paper “Possible poriferan body fossils in early Neoproterozoic microbial reefs” has been published in the journal Nature.

Tags: fossilSponges
ShareTweetShare
Alexandru Micu

Alexandru Micu

Stunningly charming pun connoisseur, I have been fascinated by the world around me since I first laid eyes on it. Always curious, I'm just having a little fun with some very serious science.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.