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760 million year old animal found in South Africa

Denyse O'Leary
February 6, 2012
Biology, Evolution, News
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In “Oldest animal ever found in Namibia?” (IOL SciTech , February 6, 2012), Shaun Smillie reports,

An academic paper, released this month in the South African Journal of Science, has announced Otavia as the earliest known animal. Microscopic Otavia fossils have been found across Namibia.

The oldest Otavia were around 760 million years old, a 150 million years earlier than when other animals emerged in the fossil record.

Otavia would have likely shared its world with algae and bacteria, both of which it preyed on.

And whatever else we find, if they didn’t get there first.

Comments
Well actually Pet, I firmly believe nothing ever found in the fossil record would ever present a 'problem' for you blind allegiance to neo-Darwinism,.. but if 'plants' were to do so,,, Many times atheists will attack the Genesis account of creation in the Bible by saying that plant life on the land did not precede the Cambrian explosion of animal life in the seas as the Bible account in Genesis says it does. Yet, at about the thirty minute mark of the following video, Hugh Ross reveals that scientists have now discovered evidence that the Genesis account is in fact correct and that plant life on land did in fact precede the explosion of animal life in the seas of the Cambrian era. Science and Scripture: Enemies or Allies? - Hugh Ross - video (recorded in October 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX6ryCArkRk Here is the relevant paper that Dr. Ross referenced at the 31 minute mark: Earth’s earliest non-marine eukaryotes - April 2011 Excerpt: They offer direct evidence of eukaryotes living in freshwater aquatic and subaerially exposed habitats during the Proterozoic era. The apparent dominance of eukaryotes in non-marine settings by 1?Gyr ago indicates that eukaryotic evolution on land may have commenced far earlier than previously thought. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7348/full/nature09943.html bornagain77
Plant fossils would present more of a problem. I'm surprised there isn't more interest in this. Petrushka
What does this find mean for the alleged "snowball earth" which allegedly ended ~650 mya? Joe
I taken it this means animals existed 150 million years before the Cambrian. Petrushka

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