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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