Posted on 08/17/2010 7:38:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Fossils of what could be the oldest animal bodies have been discovered in Australia, pushing back the clock on when animal life first appeared on Earth to at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought.
The results suggest that primitive sponge-like creatures lived in ocean reefs about 650 million years ago. Digital images of the fossils suggest the animals were about a centimeter in size (the width of your small fingertip) and had irregularly shaped bodies with a network of internal canals.
The shelly fossils, found beneath a 635 million-year-old glacial deposit in South Australia, represent the earliest evidence of animal body forms in the current fossil record. Previously, the oldest known fossils of hard-bodied animals were from two reef-dwelling organisms that lived around 550 million years ago.
Researchers have identified controversial fossils of soft-bodied animals that date to the latter part of the Ediacaran period between 577 and 542 million years ago.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Limestone rock in Australia contained fossils (shown in blue) that may represent Earth's earliest animal life.
The serial grinding process created nearly 500 such images that the scientists stacked and autotraced to create a 3-D model.
Credit: Maloof Lab/Situ Studio.
/mark
Thanks for posting this.
Even before communists took over our country
It’s only a matter of time, before a picture of Helen Thomas appears here.
...ask and you shall receive...
Come on, you guys planned that!
That's after 4 billion years of evolution ~ same genes, same stemcells ~ virtually NO significant changes. Darwin didn't predict this!
I tell you this is evidence the ancient honored ancestors came spilling out of some child's tropical fish tank.
No significant change? Are you a sponge?
Let's say the Universe is about 14 billion years old. The Earth is estimated at about 4.5 billion years old, and the Sun is maybe 5 billion + a tad.
If those sponges had 70% of the DNA strands we have today (in their coding genes), and our line of critters has only managed to add the other 30% in 4 billion years (since those sponges started up), that gives you a gross rate of increase of about 7% per billion years.
In short, it would take a minimum of about 14 billion years to start from non-living stuff somewhere to get to modern humans ~ assuming the rate of "evolution" is constant.
That requires a good 9 billion years worth of our own "evolution" had to be accomplished SOMEWHERE ELSE THAN EARTH.
Do you realize how terribly many "evolution" stories are based on an analysis of DNA changes that are believed to occur at a steady state.
It is very obvious that if it takes longer to "evolve" a sponge than Earth or the Solar system existed, and nearly as long as the Universe itself has existed, the theory of evolution is in some serious trouble.
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We’re making progress. At least it is acknowledged the earth is older than 6,500 years.
Why would you assume the rate of evolution is constant? Clearly it isn’t, nor would anyone argue that it is. Evolution is a consequence of many things, but fundamental are alterations to the abiotic conditions which populations develop in - IOW, a driver of the speed of evolutionary changes are the change in environmental conditions.
What about the bathing suit bottom at the lower right of that picture?
Logically some protozoans would have existed before sponges, but naturally wouldn’t have left any fossils.
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