Have fossils reproduced 5 500 million years ago?

Yes, it's amazing to find a lot of hundreds of millions of years ago.

After being buried by sediments, the biological remains or relics buried in the sediments were transformed by physical and chemical processes (often accompanied by mineral metasomatism and filling) to form fossils (Fig.

Figure Schematic diagram of the fossil formation process.

Organisms in nature are diverse and abundant, but not all dead creatures are preserved as fossils. The formation of paleontological fossils requires harsh conditions: first, the organism itself must have a hard body that is easy to be preserved, and the minerals that make up the hard body are relatively stable in diagenesis and petrification and are not easy to be decomposed; secondly, the organism is quickly buried by sediment after death, and its carcass is not swallowed by other animals and is not destroyed by external forces; Thirdly, the buried biological remains or relics should withstand the transformation of various geological processes without being destroyed, which mainly include high-pressure compaction and consolidation of overlying huge thick sediments, crystallization and metamorphism under geothermal high temperatures, tectonic deformation and groundwater hydrosomatism.

In the process of such complex geological processes, the vast majority of organisms and biological remains are destroyed, and only a very few survive to become fossils. The complete paleontological fossils that have been excavated are only a very small part of the biological kingdom that once lived on the earth, and the probability of being preserved as fossils is only about 1 in 10,000.

Paleontological fossils are the remains of animals that died in ancient times, and the flesh was decomposed and disappeared from the bones, but because they were buried by wind-blown sand sediments after years of silence, the animal remains eventually turned stone.

That's right. Very well written, a thumbs up.

(1) Organic matter must have hard parts, such as shells, bones, teeth, or woody tissue. However, under very favorable conditions, even very fragile organisms, such as insects or jellyfish, are able to turn into fossils.

2) Creatures must be avoided from destruction immediately after death. If a creature's body is partially crushed, decayed, or severely weathered, this may alter or eliminate the possibility of the organism becoming fossilized.

3) Organisms must be quickly buried by something that hinders decomposition. And the type of material that is buried usually depends on the environment in which the organism lives. The remains of marine animals are often fossilized because they die and sink to the bottom of the sea, covered in soft mud.

Soft mud becomes shale or limestone in later geological epochs. Fine-grained sediments are less likely to damage the remains of living organisms. In certain fine-grained sedimentary rocks of the Jurassic period in Germany, fossils of fragile organisms such as birds, insects, jellyfish, etc., are well preserved.

Scientists may have found evidence of the oldest life on Earth. According to new evidence, life on Earth may have started as early as 300 million years after the Earth first formed. The oldest life on Earth was previously confirmed to be around 3.5-3.7 billion years old.

Many scientists believe that the Earth was formed around 4.5 billion years ago. This brings the age of these new microfossils to a staggering 4.2 billion years.

The discovery that the oldest life on Earth could have formed so early is exciting for many reasons. First, it shows that life began to emerge even at a time when the Earth was not yet as habitable as it is now. Second, scientists believe that these types of microfossils may also exist as signs of extraterrestrial life.

The microfossils in question were first described in a 2017 study led by researcher Dominic Papineau. However, at the time, many people were skeptical of these structures of biology**. This has led to more research on microfossils, giving birth to a new study published this month in Science Advances.

In the study, the team described potentially the oldest life on Earth as a tree-like structure, about a centimeter wide, similar to some of the bacteria we see in our day and age. In addition, scientists believe that the characteristics of these microfossils make an abiotic origin very unlikely.

Of course, the discovery of evidence of the oldest life on Earth also opens new doors to the question. If the origin of life takes such a short time to develop, then it brings more about the whole"The probability of life"philosophical questions. While the discovery of the oldest life on Earth is exciting, there is still no 100% evidence that these microfossils are the origin of living things.

The microfossils may harbor signs of ancient life, researchers say. However, it needs to be shown that these microstructures are actually inside the environment and that they are not formed in later processes. If researchers can prove this, then we will have a new solidified record of the oldest life on Earth.

Researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered the fossils of the Ediacara biota in the Qaidam Basin of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This is the second fossil of the Ediacaran biota found in China, and the oldest fossil biota ever found on the Tibetan Plateau. This group of fossils dates back to about 100 million years ago.

The Ediacaran biota lived in the late Ediacaran and was the most widespread multicellular invertebrate in the world on the eve of the Cambrian explosion of life. The Earth was born 4.6 billion years ago, when there was no matter on the surface of the Earth except water. When the earth evolved 3 billion years ago, the first biological forms of cyanobacteria and bacteria appeared on the earth, and these bacteria and cyanobacteria photosynthesized to produce oxygen, and the earth's environment began to change.

The advent of oxygen on Earth led to the continued development of living organisms, and a wide variety of algae and single-celled lower organisms began to appear on Earth. Subsequently, multicellular animals also appeared on Earth. Multicellular animals evolved to form multicellular invertebrates, and the fauna composed of these animals is the Ediacaran biota, and the Ediacaran biota continued to develop, and the Cambrian era, the era of the first biological explosion on the earth, arrived.

The Ediacaran biota is characterized by soft bodies with no spine and no skeleton. Their main food is all kinds of algae and bacteria in the ocean, such as various worms, jellyfish, hydras and other lower organisms. On the eve of this Cambrian period, these mollusks gradually evolved protective shells and bones with chitin, which were also the earliest vertebral prototypes.

The Ediacaran period is of great significance to the study of the evolution and biodiversity of the earth, when the earth was all oceans and no land, which also reveals that the Tibetan Plateau was still at the bottom of the sea at the time of the Cambrian explosion of life. The emergence of land is much later than the emergence of life, which further confirms that the origin of life came from the sea.

I don't say exactly what kind of creatures they are, but these creatures are very leaf-like, and the scenery of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is very good, and there are many secrets in it.

Chani is a sessile phyllodes organism that grew on the seafloor in the late Ediacaran period, and is one of the most typical fossils in the Ediacaran biota. This is the second Ediacaran biota fossil source discovered in China after the Three Gorges region in Hubei.

The newly discovered Ediacara fossils in the Wrinkled Mountains Formation are represented by charnia. Chani is a sessile phyllodes organism that grew on the seafloor in the late Ediacaran period, and is one of the most typical fossils in the Ediacaran biota, which first appeared in the Avalon assemblage about 100 million years ago and the Nama assemblage about 100 million years ago. While the genetic relationship of the Ediacaran biota is controversial, recent research evidence suggests that at least some of them may be the ancestors of metazoans and are linked to living animal phyla, including Chani.

It is also a relatively simple fossil of some organisms, because it did not evolve particularly well billions of years ago, so it is still relatively simple.

The oldest fossil was discovered in Canada in 2017 by British scientists, and it is a fossil of microorganisms about 4.2 billion years old, and the microorganisms that form the fossils are only one-tenth the thickness of a human hair, and they are similar to the microorganisms that currently live near hydrothermal vents in the deep sea, and they all feed on iron.

Fossil formation:

In most cases, the petrification process begins when a plant or animal dies and is quickly covered with sediment, usually at the bottom of a body of water. The loose sediment protects the remains from the elements, bacteria, and other forces that cause weathering and decay. This slowed down the decay process, so some of the remains were preserved for thousands of years (in most cases, only hard materials like bones or shells).

During this time, layers of sediment continue to accumulate above the bones. Eventually, these sedimentary layers turn into hard, solid rock. At some point after the formation of the hard rock formation, water seeps down from the rocks and washes away the preserved remains.

Due to the hard rock above, it did not fall into the clearing where the wreckage was located. This open space forms a natural animal model, perfectly preserving the shape of the original ruins.

The place where the first life on Earth was born was in the Pilbara region of Australia. The Pilbara fossils have been a record of the earliest life since the 80s of the last century, until researchers studying ancient rocks in Greenland have evidence of ancient life there. But subsequent studies have been questioned ......

Now, a new study of the Pilbara fossils has been established because of the presence of organic ...... in these fossilsThe ancient life in the title is stromatolite, a rock-like structure built by tiny single-celled organisms known as cyanobacteria. Stromatolites are both mineral and organic because they are formed by microbial communities that secrete mucus that trap sediment particles. Stromatolites occur in columnar, mound, and sheet structures that look like sedimentary rocks.

Stromatolites are the earliest evidence of life on Earth.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales published the new findings in the journal, "This is an exciting discovery and we have shown the world for the first time that these stromatolites are conclusive evidence of the earliest life on Earth." ”

The principal investigator is Dr Raphael, a researcher at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, and these stromatolites were discovered in the 80s of the last century, and although there is some evidence, there are still uncertainties, which have been eliminated by the recent discovery of organic matter.

Stromatolites are not only ancient. They are still being formed today. **Photographed at Shark Bay, Australia.

This represents a major advance in our understanding of these rocks, and more specifically, in the search for life on Mars. Because we now have new goals and new ways to find ancient traces of life. Another co-author, Professor Vankranendonk, said.