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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.
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.
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.
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