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1.6 Billion-Year-Old Plant Fossil Found In India (phys.org)
Complex multicellular life began 400 million years earlier than we thought, according to a Phys.org article shared by Slashdot reader William Robinson:
Scientists found two kinds of fossils resembling red algae in uniquely well-preserved sedimentary rocks at Chitrakoot in central India. One type is thread-like, the other one consists of fleshy colonies. The scientists were able to see distinct inner cell structures and so-called cell fountains, the bundles of packed and splaying filaments that form the body of the fleshy forms and are characteristic of red algae... The oldest known red algae before the present discovery are 1.2 billion years old. The Indian fossils, 400 million years older and by far the oldest plant-like fossils ever found, suggest that the early branches of the tree of life need to be recalibrated.
Interestingly the Hindus claim that the world is OLDER than what current science says
If the printing press has not arrested the evolution of Hindu scriptures in 18th century, by this time we would have established Jesus and Mohammad as avatars of Vishnu, and Darwin as a recent saint. There is one version of Brahmandapurana which has the entire old testament geneology, the story of genesis and most of European history up the Queen Victoria. It is typically disregarded as an interpolation done at the behest of the evil British. But it does show there were enough collaborators to the evil British who knew enough Sanskrit to write in the old style and do the interpolation.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact