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Did Sea Life Arise Twice?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the shoulda-got-it-right-the-first-time dept.

eldavojohn writes "Dr. Adam Maloof has found fossils of sea sponges in Australia from 650 million years ago. You might think this is no big deal unless you consider that sea sponges were thought to have arisen 520 million years ago. These fossils predate the oldest hard bodied fossils we have by a hundred million years. Dr. Maloof is now wondering if life might have arisen twice after the first attempt was quashed 635 million years ago: 'Since animals probably did not evolve twice, we are suddenly confronted with the question of how some relative of these reef-dwelling animals survived the Snowball Earth.' So how is it that life survived the Marinoan glaciation? The BBC has a video on the topic and Wikipedia has a time line of the Proterozoic Eon into the Paleozoic Era."

8 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    This opens us to the theory that perhaps life evolved many times, considering the conditions we're viable (we are here now), it could've happened in many distinct, unrelated yet similar ways... Good find but not NEWs.

  2. Re:The missing link by qoncept · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I was being facetious. And would it kill them to give us syntax highlighting?

    --
    Whale
  3. Technology rocks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Live survived on a frozen planet 600 million years ago and the BBC has a video. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  4. Re:Throw away the Snowball. by minogully · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You can't do this... you'll be risking a galactic snowball fight!

  5. Success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Ever notice how the word success sounds a lot like sucks sex?

  6. Dereks Discourse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Good day... :)

    I mentioned your blog on my blog, just wanted to give you a heads up.

    Here is a direct link to the post...
    http://www.dereksdiscourse.com/2010/08/around-web-in-80-days-blogs.html

    Keep up the good work

    -derek-

  7. Blame the Hoff by RevWaldo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The sponges came ashore, but Hasselhoff put 'em back.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jNTnBTKiQk

    He's sorta like Chuck Norris, without the roundhouse kick.

    .

    --
    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
  8. Re:Throw away the Snowball. by __aasqbs9791 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What we really need is a time travel device of some sort. And it would probably be good if we included some kind of cloaking technology. We could call it a chameleon circuit or something. But it would probably be built by the lowest bidder and fail upon the first use, getting stuck in some era/location specific form. Well, it would still be a time travel device, oh, and we could make it bigger on the inside than on the outside!