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Oldest Animal: Fossilized While Hatching

Posted by michael on from the sole-purpose-of-your-life-is-to-serve-as-an-example dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Thousands of 600 million years old embryo microfossils have been found in China that may be among the first animals. It is a case of preserving the seemingly unpreserveable. The Precambrian coral-like animals seem to have spiral patterns that show some were preserved at the moment of hatching, according to the researchers: 'These organisms lived 600 million years ago -- before big animals. This would be the very first moment of animal evolution preserved in the fossil record.'"

2 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. Wish I had some concept of the size by artifex2004 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article says these are microfossils, but still - if they're big enough to survive this long, much less be sliced open for more detailed examination soon, they can't be all that small, can they?

  2. Re:Wow. by hyperquantization · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ok, first of all, Evolution is in itself an -ism. it is a sort of atheistic religion that fills in the gap for not having any kind of deity to explain things...well at least for as far back as evolution can go in time.
    next:
    THE SCIENCE YOU SPEAK OF IS ALL BASED ON FAITH IN THE FIRST PLACE! can we honestly say that this "reality", as we call it, is actually an absolute in and of itself? or is there an underlying, or overlying if anything, absolute that defines our very existence? if so, then science is NOT the basis of everything. in fact, science should NEVER be considered the basis of anything, it is merely an observation and analysis of what we can actually see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. there is NOTHING that we can possibly even try to observe that eludes all 5 senses. so what we cannot percieve, cannot be science, right? and you do agree that science can only be achieved by standing upon the sholders of those before us, yes? then someone, a long time ago, assumed that what they saw/heard/smelled/touched/tasted was what it was. science was built upon observations, and if observations are assumptions, then science must be in itself an elaborate assumption.

    and also, in light of eternity, the time that the universe has existed shows up only as an infinitesimal blip. this sparks the realization of another couple things we cannot begin to comprehend due to our finite speck of knowledge: that which is infinite and/or infinitesimal.
    ......
    but to return to the topic at hand: how were these fossils dated? how many samplings of the datings did they test? any other specifics?