There has been a major discovery in the science world. The paper was published in Geology, a journal that monthly publishes more than 20 short papers covering all the earth sciences and offers readers the lastest and hottest topics. Entitled Putatuve Cryogenian ciliates from Mongolia, researchers at MIT, Harvard and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, report finding the oldest hairy microbes that have ever been documented.
These hairy microbes called ciliates are part of a large group of microorganisms that are common in water. They are single cells and the hairs or cilia are how they propel themselves through the water. What is unusual is to find the fossilized remains since most of the organisms just dissolve when they die. The fossils that were found in Mongolia, date from 635 to 715 million years ago. This is more than 100 million years earlier than any previous finds. Current thinking is that if the ciliates were around this much earlier, it may be that other forms of life may also have been around a lot longer than scientist thought.
The MIT news quotes Tanya Bosak, Assistant Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, who was one of the researchers as saying “These massive changes in biology and chemistry during this time led to the evolution of animals, We don’t know how fast these changes occurred, and now we are finding evidence of an increase in complexity.”
In 2008 one of the other researchers, Francis Macdonald, from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, traveled to Mongolia and according to MIT news, hiked the Tsagaan Oloom Formation in the southwest of the country. This is an area that is rich in glacial deposits which are remnants of two great ice ages. Up until now, there have been very few fossils found from this time period which has made it difficult for scientist to figure out exactly what life forms lived during the Cryogenian period. Samples were brought back to Cambridge, Massachusetts and the team began their search for fossils. It was very rewarding as hundreds of fossils were discovered. According to Bosak, the fossils they found were very similar to a group of ciliates called tintinnids.
Tintinnids have a shell like surface which makes them more prone to forming a fossil. It is possible that the deposits of carbon produced may have led to the evolution to higher forms of life. The carbon released oxygen which may have led to life that uses oxygen to evolve. The possibilities are fascinating. According to Bosnak, “Having found this, we know other things should have been there, possibly not leaving a fossil record, and this really shows there could have been much more going on than we thought.”
Research will continue to determine what caused these ciliates to develop a shell and also to examine fossils from different strata to determine how they evolved. The ultimate thought that these one celled creatures may hold the key to the evolution of animals makes this a particularly exciting discovery.
