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1.6 Billion-Year-Old Plant Fossil Found In India (phys.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the aged-algae dept.

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.

38 comments

  1. FAKE NEWS by DonaId+Trump · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Everyone knows the world is only 6,000 years old, folks. This fossil is a conspiracy by the Chinese, believe me.

    1. Re:FAKE NEWS by RotateLeftByte · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      "TheRealDonaldTrump" would never say this. He'd say something like

      "We are gonna make them pay for this. It will be Fantastic, Tremendous and I'm the most intelligent man on the planet."

      --
      I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
    2. Re:FAKE NEWS by dougdonovan · · Score: -1, Redundant

      damn, i was hoping that all the people from india that live and work in the US would go back to india to honor this 1.6 billion year old plant fossil.

    3. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Interestingly the Hindus claim that the world is OLDER than what current science says

    4. Re:FAKE NEWS by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What I find interesting is why anyone puts stock in religious or mythical beliefs that really ultimately were just, at best, wild conjecture, and likely just as often just good old fashioned fabrication. We didn't really begin to have a good scientifically-based notion that the Earth was very old until the 18th century as the science of geology began to form.

      I love reading ancient myths, whether they be the Bible or the Vedas. They give us an extraordinary window on ancient cultures, on their structures, on their worldview and their aspirations. The one thing such works are not very good for is determining the age of the Earth, of the Universe, or how life formed and evolved. In many cases, ancient myth-writers had such flawed views of the natural world that their writings weren't even wrong. I can forgive them, they lived before any kind of reliable naturalistic methodologies existed. I can't really forgive modern Creationists, however. Embracing some silly Bronze Age person's notion of the universe and rejecting modern science is just plain idiotic.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      How did Trump get into this conversation?

      Are you snowflakes still upset about the election / not really understanding how the electoral college works?

    6. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      How did Trump get into this conversation?

      Are you snowflakes still upset about the election / not really understanding how the electoral college works?

      Yeah, they're still sucking up the fake news that Hillary! is going to win.

      Along with the fake news that the Russians are to blame.

    7. Re: FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, the life of the party. How witty.

    8. Re:FAKE NEWS by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Hindus have a very relaxed view of the scriptures. For example the important avatars of God Vishnu are, in order, fish (matsya), turtle (koorma), pig (varaha), man-lion (nara-simha), dwarf-man (vaamana), axe-man (parasu-raman), perfect-man (Raman), imperfect-man (Krishnan) and the eagerly awaited apocalypse-inducer (kalki). Now many are stretching this as an adumberation of the theory of evolution.

      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
    9. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Paleontology will always have findings like this that push dates around without mercy. It is one of the sciences, along with archeology and geology, where are always guaranteed to have massive selection bias.

      We can only see what is left behind. Unlike an omniscient observer or obsessive record keeper, we merely get to read a few and unclear pages from the book of history.

      Using our best dating technology, single celled life left records going back to 3.8 billion years ago, about when the surface was solid. But multicellular life, like these mushrooms, is very recent at around 600 MYA. These dates are based on very carefully calculated decay rates of nuclear decay. These same timetables apply to our planetary nuclear arsenal.

      But for modern Creationists this evidence doesn't help. Unless you do the experiments yourself you are relying upon the expertise of others and their claims. Once you do that, then some people argue otherwise about the age of the world based on their own selection of experts and data.

      Frankly, I just hope these people are not the ones testing and maintaining our nuclear stockpiles.

    10. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We didn't really begin to have a good scientifically-based notion that the Earth was very old until the 18th century as the science of geology began to form.

      Not true. The ancient Greek approached Earth very scientific. Take for instance Heron of Alexandria (which was Greek at the time). At the time it was widely known that the planet is a globe. They even had evidence for it. A lunar eclipse displays the earth's shadow on the moon and shape of the shadow reveals a round/globe shape. However Heron went one step further. He heard that in Luxor, there was a well, which for some mysterious reason had sunlight hitting the water, but it only happened once every year. Heron figured it would happen when the sun was directly on top of the well, meaning he had a predictable time when the sunlight hit the ground in a 90 degree angle. He put a stick in the ground in Alexandra, which was 90 degree to the ground. At the time the sun hit the water, he measured the shadow of the stick, which allowed him to calculate the angle the sun hit the ground. He then viewed the planet as a circle, used the angle to calculate which fraction of the circle is between him and the well. Next he managed to obtain the distance between Alexandra and Luxor (somebody else measured it). What remained then was a multiplication to get how far he would have to travel to get all the way around the planet. His measurements were crude and he didn't hit the correct number, but the error was in the realm of single digit percentage.

      I say that's a fairly scientific approach to observing Earth and much better than what most people assume from people living in the first century.

      Columbus did not fight the fear of falling off the edge of a flat world. What was actually questioned was the distance to Asia. Assuming America didn't exist (clearly a possible risk before it was discovered) the route from Europe to Asia would have been further than half the way around the planet. The ships didn't have enough supplies to make it that far, meaning the debate was about if the ships would be lost at sea due to running out of supplies and if you could risk something as expensive as 3 ships to just be lost like that. The story about falling off the edge was added much later, possibly the 18th or 19th century where people wanted to say people in the past were stupid.

      The 6000 year old planet comes from a man, who studied the Bible. He did that in a fairly scientific way (surprisingly) where he took note of each person and how they relate to other people. He then tried to construct a timeline to figure out how far back the Bible goes before the birth of Christ. He comes up with some date in October 4004 BC. He then announced that was the date Earth was created and since he wasn't a nobody in the Church, it was adopted and even added to the Bible itself. If we leave out his conclusion about genesis, the fact that the Bible should contain tales of kings and other important people for 4000 years is actually interesting. However that's off topic because it's a question for historians and this is about science.

      The first man to question the 4004 BC year was James Hutton, a Scotsman who discovered sentiments. He never made a guess to the age of the planet, but he knew 6000 years had to be way too little to make what he had observed. That was mid 18th century. I highly recommend the 3 part series "Men of rock" if you want to know more about how modern Earth observations started.

    11. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget the fake news that deficits matter, when Reagan proved they didn't.

    12. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How did Jains know about microscopic life for millennia before the microscope?

    13. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The name of the person who started this off is 'Donald Trump'
      That's how that name got into the thread which you would have known had you read it instead of ranting off like a good little troll.

    14. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Embracing some silly Bronze Age person's notion of the universe and rejecting modern science is just plain idiotic."

      Your argument applies perhaps to Abrahamic faiths - I find the Hindu texts fascinating.

      1) Hinduism describes the universe as being full of planets, billions of planets - you gain good Karma , you reincarnate onto a better planet. You gain bad karma , you go downwards. There are 14 levels of planets with Earth being a "class 7" planet. There is only one class 1 planet in the entire universe - Brahmaloka. Your objective in life (in the universe) is to reach Brahmaloka.
      2) The is a complex universal calendar explaining the creation and destruction ( and then re-creation ) of this entire system.
      3) There are also beings that exist that are not affected by time - these beings have witnessed the construction and destruction of the above system repeatedly . ( Possibly existing outside our universe )
      4) There are multiple universes but with their own time system.
      5) There is a famous story in one of the Vedas of a man who was transported to Brahmaloka from Earth ( it does not state how ). When he got back to Earth , hundreds of years had passed and all his family were dead. This ties in to Einsteins theory of relativity. How would a "Bronze Age" civilization know about this ?

      I don't have time to type the other interesting bit - there are alot. But my point is , while I am a follower of modern science , it gives me lots of theory from a perspective of observation from a point in the universe ( our little rock ) - no scientist on Earth has travelled the Universe.

      The above - while part of a religion , is interesting and does not inherently oppose what we are slowing discovering from our perspective. I have no interest in Abrahamic faiths , but the Hindu "science" is very interesting.

    15. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was an English officer who fought among the Creek to liberate them from the Nazis. He used to recite a Sanskrit translation of the Winnie the Pooh in the backwards from his memory during his parties to entertain his guests. Sanskrit skills were definitely prevalent among the educated British establishment.

      by this time we would have established Jesus and Mohammad as avatars of Vishnu,

      Would have? I remember that at least Jesus have been an Vishnu, or Krishna incarnation for some Hindus. Or it was all a Catholic conspiracy. ;)

    16. Re:FAKE NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Embracing some silly Bronze Age person's notion of the universe and rejecting modern science is just plain idiotic.

      It is not idiotic, rather, it is human. What your intellectual arrogance misses is that there is a location in your brain I can zap with a few mA that will make you see God. Why the fuck did that evolve? We evolved into society, and the mythologies and ancient religions evolved with us. Mythology, as Joseph Campbell puts it, is the social dream, while a dream is the individual mythology. Science has limits, beyond which it cannot explain anything, and our modern scientific culture is constantly coming to the end of what science can explain more often than you think. More hard-core scientists are switching from atheism to agnosticism to honest to goodness belief in a higher power than ever before, even faster than previous believers who subsequently gained knowledge that some beliefs were bunk had turned athiest, and mostly it is due to these modern scientists seeing inexplicable beauty and order where there should be none. We don't know everything, and science can get us really really far in our understanding of the Universe, but has its limits. Where science finds a wall, mythology picks up to help us understand more about ourselves and our place in the Universe. Mythology and ancient religions, and science, for the rational and open-minded, are not polar opposites only existing to prove the other is false, rather, science tells us about the world, but mythology tells us about ourselves, the minds of the ancients, seated in their brains, which by all accounts, is identical to the brains of modern man.

      It is a mistake, and science itself says so, that there exists any ultimate objective vantage point. Science will never tell you why you think a sunset is beautiful, nor satisfactorily explain why you love. Objectivity is a human notion, and when you come right down to it, simply can't exist in a pure form... well, there is math.
      Except for math, I suppose, everything is relative, everything is subjective.

      Don't be such an intellectually arrogant twat. Leave room for the possibility of your mistakes, misinterpretation, misunderstnding, and the possibility that you may never understand something because science can't ever touch it. I've give you one half of Planck Time to decide that maybe you don't really know what you think you really know.

  2. Maybe it was a software bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    in the program of the guys who created our universe as a sim for a class project, or whatever.

    400 million years discrepancy, hey, it's not like that's a P1 bug.

  3. Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by dryriver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I love the way in the 21st Century we keep reading news headlines that end in "... than previously thought". Its always science news, too. Something or the other is always ..................... than previously thought. =) Of course updating what we "know" according to new data is a good thing. But its striking how often ".... than previously thought" appears in the news.

    --
    Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
    1. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A similar observation. I've often noticed that when I misplace something like my house keys, it always turns up in the last place I'd look.

    2. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's memes repeating themselves all the way down. Some cunning linguists should study the spread of the expression among the languages globally. It's the only way to be sure.

    3. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      But its striking how often ".... than previously thought" appears in the news.

      And it's also striking how rarely science news reports results that confirm previous scientific thought. It's almost as if confirming previous scientific thought isn't considered newsworthy. :)

    4. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      That's why I save time by searching in reverse order.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by sysrammer · · Score: 2

      But its striking how often ".... than previously thought" appears in the news.

      And it's also striking how rarely science news reports results that confirm previous scientific thought. It's almost as if confirming previous scientific thought isn't considered newsworthy. :)

      That's what I was going to say. If it's not new, it's not "news".

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    6. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah it's good to know there's still one group of humans willing to change their assumptions when new evidence comes to light.

      You may be over-estimating how much certainty was assigned to prior assumptions, however. Scientists know better than most that new information can change things, since their whole job is to find it.

    7. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lol, title without context seems hilariously naive. But, I am also surprised whenever my assumptions are wrong. It is certainly an anomaly, every time.

      Captcha: corrects

    8. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by fredrated · · Score: 1

      It's what science does, improve it's knowledge. You could say it's the core of science. You seem to be unhappy that you can't just 'know' something and it will always be true. On behalf of the Universe let me apologize.

    9. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      LIFO's are fine, but I'm partial to binary searches, myself. I usually start my search for my car keys on my front porch, halfway between my bedroom and my car.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    10. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      ...I am also surprised whenever my assumptions are wrong. It is certainly an anomaly, every time.

      qft

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    11. Re:Remarkable How Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Binary search only works for ordered data. If you don't find them on the porch, which direction do you move?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. 1.6 Billion-Year-Old Plant Fossil Found In India by Hognoxious · · Score: -1, Troll

    On its resume, claims to have 2.4 billion years of experience with photosynthesis 2.0.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. What the fossils say: by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    When contacted the fossils said, through a translator, " Our son got a job in America and emigrated, and our daughter got married and moved to London. When our grandkids were small we used to visit USA because baby-sitters cost more than round trip flight tickets from India. After the grand kids grew up and the medical insurance became too expensive, we stopped visiting. We were left behind in India".

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:What the fossils say: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My fossil says it's 10:07AM.

  6. Re:1.6 Billion-Year-Old Plant Fossil Found In Indi by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1, Funny

    Definitely wrong. The world is 4.6 billion years old, so claims of 3 billion years of experience in photosyntheris would be credible. Any Indian fossil worth its salt would claim 5 billion years of experience.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  7. Stone and carbondating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All know this is false, because you can't carbondate stone...

  8. Nice try Atheists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait, the Earth is older than 6,000 years?

  9. My pastor says the Earth is only 6,000 years old. by newdsfornerds · · Score: 1

    LoL

    --
    Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
  10. article by Abvaner · · Score: 1

    Great article, good job!