Earth’s First Plants?

[n2doc]

By Dave Mosher February 16, 2011




A trove of seaweed-like fossils unearthed in southern China may be some of the oldest plants ever discovered.

Until now the earliest definitive evidence of complex creatures resembling modern organisms was about 580 million years old. A series of fossils described Feb. 16 in Nature predates those archetypal creatures by anywhere from 20 million to 56 million years.

“It’s not the oldest multicellular life,” said paleontologist Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech, a co-author of the study. “But it is a collection of the oldest diverse, complex and macroscopic multicellular life.”

Bacteria emerged 3.4 billion years ago. About 2 billion years ago, some may have gone multicellular, though it’s possible they were just ornate groups of single-celled organisms.


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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/seaweed-fossils-edicaran/