Fossilized Tubes Point to Super-Ancient Mobile Organisms

If the structures identified in a 2.1-billion-year-old rock are really signs of burrowing organisms, it would push back the earliest known mobile organisms by 1.5 billion years.

Written byJef Akst

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ABOVE: Scientists report that tubular structures fossilized in black shale dating to 2.1 billion years ago were made by Earth’s first mobile organisms.
ABDERRAZAK EL ALBANI

In the country of Gabon on the west coast of Africa, researchers have uncovered 2.1-billion-year-old black shale that contains markings thought to be made by mobile organisms. Specifically, the rock contains fossils of tubular structures reminiscent of those created by marine organisms that tunnel into the sediment. The results, published this week (February 11) in PNAS, predate animal life and push back the date of the earliest-known mobile organisms by some 1.5 billion years.

“What matters here is their astonishing complexity and diversity in shape and size, and likely in terms of metabolic, developmental and behavioral patterns, including the just-discovered earliest evidence of motility, at least for certain among them,” coauthor Abderrazak El Albani of the University of Poitiers in France tells Reuters.

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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