The first animals : ca. 760-million-year-old sponge-like fossils from Namibia : research article
By C. Brain, A. Prave, K. Hoffmann, A. Fallick, A. Botha, D. Herd, C. Sturrock, Iain M. Young, Daniel J. Condon, Stuart Allison. 2012
84 citations recorded by the source corpus.
One of the most profound events in biospheric evolution was the emergence of animals, which is thought to have occurred some 600-650 Ma. Here we report on the discovery of phosphatised body fossils that we interpret as ancient sponge-like fossils and term them Otavia antiqua gen. et sp. nov. The fossils are found in Namibia in rocks that range in age between about 760 Ma and 550 Ma. This age places the advent of animals some 100 to 150 million years earlier than proposed, and prior to the extreme climatic changes and postulated stepwise increases in oxygen levels of Ediacaran time. These findings support the predictions based on genetic sequencing and inferences drawn from biomarkers that the first animals were sponges. Further, the deposition and burial of Otavia as sedimentary particles may have driven the large positive C-isotopic excursions and increases in oxygen levels that have been inferred for Neoproterozoic time.
Subfields: Ecology, Paleontology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5824630d8d5a5108bb9be50a4eff4adf1615af7f
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Citations in the corpus
- The Laurentian record of Neoproterozoic glaciation, tectonism, and eukaryotic evolution in Death Valley, California (2013, background): “…from strata deposited during the Cryogenian1 glacial interlude has increased dramatically with discoveries from Namibia (Bosak et al., 2011a, 2012; Brain et al., 2012; Pruss et al., 2010) and Mongolia (Bosak et al., 2011b), attempts at integrating Cryogenian fossil records globally and assessing…”
- Remarkable insights into the paleoecology of the Avalonian Ediacaran macrobiota (2015, unknown): “…(e.g. Peterson et al., 2008; Erwin et al., 2011), as well as Cryogenian biomarkers (Love et al., 2009) and putative body fossils (Maloof et al., 2010; Brain et al., 2012), have all been suggested to support a preEdiacaran origin of animals (though see Antcliffe, 2013; Antcliffe et al., 2014).”