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Did Land-Dwellers Emerge 65 Million Years Earlier Than Was Thought?
ananyo writes "A controversial paper published in Nature argues that enigmatic fossils regarded as ancient sea creatures were actually land-dwelling lichen. If true, that would suggest life on land began 65 million years earlier than researchers now estimate. The nature of fossils from the Ediacaran period, some 635 million–542 million years ago, has been fiercely debated by palaeontologists. But where others envisage Ediacaran sea beds crawling with archaic animals, Gregory Retallack, a geologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, sees these sites in southern Australia as dry, terrestrial landscapes dotted with lichens. He proposes that rock in the Ediacara Member in South Australia — where palaeontologist Reginald Sprigg first discovered Ediacaran fossils in 1947 — represents ancient soils, and presents new geological data. Among other lines of evidence, Retallack argues that the rock's red colour and weathering pattern indicate that the deposits were formed in terrestrial — not marine — environments (abstract). Others strongly disagree."
... all the wrong answers.
Conventional wisdom has it that complex life evolved in the sea and then crawled up onto land but NPR reports that a provocative new study published in Nature suggests that the earliest large life forms may have appeared on land long before the oceans filled with creatures that swam and crawled and burrowed in the mud. Paleontologists have found fossil evidence for a scattering of animals called Ediacarans that predate the Cambrian explosion about 530 million years ago when complex life suddenly burst forth and filled the seas with a panoply of life forms. Many scientists have assumed Ediacarans were predecessors of jellyfish, worms and other invertebrates but palaeontologist Greg Retallack has been building the case that Ediacarans weren't in fact animals, but actually more like fungi or lichens and that Ediacarans weren't even living in the sea, as everyone has assumed. "What I'm saying for the Ediacaran is that the big [life] forms were on land and life was actually quite a bit simpler in the ocean," says Retallack adding that his new theory lends credence to the idea that life actually evolved on land and then moved into the sea. Paul Knauth at Arizona State University has been pondering this same possibility. "I don't have any problem with early evolution being primarily on land," says Knauth. "I think you can make a pretty good argument for that, and that it came into the sea later. It's kind of a radical idea, but the fact is we don't know." Knauth says it could help explain why the Cambrian explosion appears to be so rapid. It's possible these many life forms gradually evolved on the land and then made a quick dash to the sea. "That means that the Earth was not a barren land surface until about 500 million years ago, as a lot of people have speculated."
Ponca City, We Love You
There's one part of me saying "don't feed the troll... don't do it", but it lost. Unlike "alternative theories", science doesn't pretend that everything written must be right, and has room for corrections. Regardless, this doesn't even touch evolution's status. Things DID evolve just fine, they just may have been in dry land somewhat earlier than previously thought.
How exactly does this prove such a thing?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Look I understand this is a news aggregator not an originator, but its still a website it should be a little ahead of the MSM. Whats the deal with the apparent pattern of posting whatever they talked about on NPR's all things considered the previous day?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
People are slowing down here.
... so the answer must be "no". Thanks for clearing that up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
yes I remember that event, it was a Tuesday.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
There's so many, with such a wide range of views, that one of them must have got it right!
On the other hand, itty bitty chemercules organising themselves into the building blocks of life is so unlikely that it clearly cannot happen, even if you wait forever.
I mean, it's like basic statistics what they learns you down in Texas...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
a video about mermaids http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgzRv4_HJIY
actually quite interesting and somewhat believable....
The point is.... seek and ye shall find...
So what do you want to believe..... today?
I know Jabberjaw dates back to 1976.I didn't read the article, but are they implying there was marine life even before that?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Remember this next time a creationist or global warming denier claims that scientists can't get published if they don't adhere to the party line.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I read that "troll" as someone who was just making a joke.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
In Texas, the Lone Star State, they do not teach statistics like that.
In fact, they do not teach statistics until you reach the university level.
The assessment by the other paleontologists quoted suggests that the evidence is currently weak.
And why is red soil color being used as evidence? Don't they analyze the soil to see what specifically makes it red, and use that as the metric? There are multiple causes of soil and rock redness. Perhaps the author merely tried to simplify the writing and excluded causes. But that makes it a bit misleading, implying that visual inspection is sufficient observation.
Table-ized A.I.
Look closely; those are simply the footprints of Martian elephants. Silly earthlings, dontcha know a piece of Mars broke off and drifted to Earth?
Table-ized A.I.
it puts everything that following the same basket as 'did aliens build the pyramid'. What's more if you want to ask questions you've got ask slashotdot for that.
Are you asking or telling, you seem confused.
Nature must not have much to publish if they waist time with pointless articles like this. I might be dumber for reading it.
By no means a dumb idea, but not especially likely. The Ediacarian/Vendian faunas don't seem closely related to the mainstream faunas of arthropods, echinoderms,brachiopods,vertebrates,etc that appeared a few tens of millions of years later although there are a few tenuous proposed relationships. In all likelihood, the Ediacarians were not ancestoral to the conventional forms. So sure, they could have lived on land (or, one supposes, freshwater lakes) while the conventional forms were evolving in the seas.
On the other hand, it's a little difficult to explain why the ediacarians seem to disappear shortly after the conventional critters arrive on the scene. ... Unless one assumes that the often mobile, and sometimes toothy, conventional critters ate the presumably more or less sessile Ediacarians -- which is only possible if both types lived in the same medium
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Obviously the Martians crashed into the water, and the space vehicles have since been destroyed by time and weather and such. Simply put, Martians were once real, but they have since ceased to exist.