A geologist has discovered rocks in Canada that may contain sponge fossils dating back 890 million years — potentially making them the earliest fossil record of animal life on Earth. Scientists will likely continue to vet and debate the published findings.
— where they analyze the rate of genetic mutations to backdate when two species likely diverged — say that available evidence points to sponges emerging much earlier, around a billion years ago.“This would be the first time that a sponge fossil has been found from before the Cambrian, and not only before, but way before — that’s what’s most exciting,” said Uppsala University’s Cardenas, adding that the research seems to confirm the molecular clock estimates.
“Those kinds of fossils belong to more complicated animals — obviously there has to be a back history” of simpler animals like sponges emerging first, said the paper’s author Turner, who is based at Laurentian University in Ontario. The dating of 890 million years ago is significant because, if the sponge’s identification is confirmed, it shows that the first animals evolved before a time when oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean reached a level scientists once thought was necessary for animal life. Yet recent research shows that some sponges can survive with very little“Everything on Earth has an ancestor.
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