Canada is now 900 million years old sponge fossils or animal origins

Researchers have found deep-sea sponge fossils nearly 900 million years ago in the mountains of Canada's northwest region, and if the inference is correct, these fossils will push the origin of the earth's animals forward by about 300 million years.

Sponge fossil data map. (Source: Nanjing Yangtze Evening News)

The Central News Agency quoted Reuters as reporting on the 30th that the rugged mountainous areas of Canada's Northwest Territories have recently found sponge fossils inhabiting the original reef formed by bacteria, which are about 890 million years old, which may give people a glimpse of the small origin of animals on the earth.

Canadian researchers say these could be the oldest animal fossils, about 300 million years before previously discovered, if read correctly.

Elizabeth Turner, a geologist at Laurentian University in Canada who conducted the study, said: "It is not surprising that the earliest evolutionary organisms were likely to be sponge-like, because sponges are the most basic type of animal, both today and in the fossil record." The study was published in the journal Nature

Earth was formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, and the earliest life forms emerged hundreds of millions of years later as bacterial-like single-celled marine organisms; complex life evolution occurred relatively late in Earth's history.

There has been much debate about the timing and form of early animal life. The organic fossil, with its mysterious ribs and pancake-like shape, called Dickinsonia, appeared about 575 million years ago and is considered a candidate for the oldest known animal.

Turner believes that animals evolved much earlier than the extant fossil record suggests. "The long history is not surprising, but the gap of hundreds of millions of years may be a bit of a surprise for some researchers," she said. ”

If these fossils were indeed some kind of sponge, their appearance would confirm that the evolution of Earth's oldest animals predates two iconic events before the advent of animal life.

One of these events was the moment of an atmospheric oxygen surge in Earth's history, dating from about 830 million to 540 million years ago; the other was when the Earth froze or at least partially frozen and the temperature plummeted, occurring about 720 million to 635 million years ago.

These fossils predate the oldest known sponge fossils by about 350 million years. Turner notes that according to genetic studies, sponges first appeared at about the same time as these fossils. (End)