ABOVE: A low-magnification view of the connected network of tunnels that form a putative sponge protein skeleton fossil found in an 890-million-year-old rock. The field of view is about 9 millimeters.
EC TURNER
Scientists predict that sponges—among the most basic animals—arose a few hundred million years before the occurrence of the oldest confirmed fossil specimens, which date to about 500 million years ago. Now, in a study published today (July 28) in Nature, Elizabeth Turner, a geologist at Laurentian University in Canada, identified structures in 890-million-year-old fossils of organisms similar to modern bath sponges, potentially pushing back the emergence of the animals to at least that long ago.
The work “gives good evidence that there were sponges living 890 million years ago, and that’s much older than any firm recognition of fossil sponges so far,” says Robert Riding, a geologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville who did not participate ...
