Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Fossil tintinnids from 635-715 mya “could have been floating about hundreds of millions of years earlier”

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Here’s Physorg on those recently found tintinnids from 635-715 million years ago. In “New fossils reveal oldest known ciliates” (November 16, 2011), Jennifer Chu reports,

Anyone who has taken high school biology has likely come into contact with a ciliate. The much-studied paramecium is one of 7,000 species of ciliates, a vast group of microorganisms that share a common morphology: single-celled blobs covered in tiny hairs, or cilia. These cilia — Greek for “eyelash” — are used to propel a microbe through water and catch prey.

Now, geologists at MIT and Harvard University have unearthed rare, flask-shaped microfossils dating back 635 to 715 million years, representing the oldest known ciliates in the fossil record. The remains are more than 100 million years older than any previously identified ciliate fossils, and the researchers say the discovery suggests early life on Earth may have been more complex than previously thought. What’s more, they say such prehistoric microbes may have helped trigger multicellular life, and the evolution of the first animals.

“These massive changes in biology and chemistry during this time led to the evolution of animals,” says Tanja Bosak, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “We don’t know how fast these changes occurred, and now we are finding evidence of an increase in complexity.”

Nicholas Butterfield, a lecturer in paleobiology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., says the group’s findings provide convincing evidence for ancient organisms that are “significantly similar” to modern ciliates. However, in his view, the fossils mark a minimum date for the evolutionary appearance of tintinnids — the hairy organisms could have been floating about hundreds of millions of years earlier.

This is not the Darwin forced on us in school. It’s not Darwin at all.

See also: Why do some life forms never really die?

Comments
"This is not the Darwin forced on us in school. It’s not Darwin at all." Yet we were told to believe them then, just as we are told to believe them now. But today's science is tomorrows science fiction. I noticed also that "ancient organisms that are “significantly similar” to modern ciliates" What!! they didn't 'evolve'into something else over all that time? It seems the only thing 'evolving' is the theory of 'evolution'.MrDunsapy
December 3, 2011
December
12
Dec
3
03
2011
04:03 PM
4
04
03
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply