1.6 billion years old fossil tracers the origin record of multicellular life

More truths are uncovered when researchers traced 1.6 billion old fossils of multicellular life 

Fossil:  fossil are the remaining of living organisms (plants , animals , and microbes) that lived in past . They may be found in the form of bones, impressions, footprint.

Groundbreaking fossils unearthed in China suggest that multicellular organisms arose earlier than scientists previously thought. The fossils, of what may be an ancient type of photosynthetic alga, are the oldest known multicellular eukaryotes, a group of organisms that contains a clearly defined nucleus full of packaged DNA

The fossils date back more than 1.6 billion years, which is around 70 million years earlier than scientists previously thought multicellularity arose, according to a new study published Jan. 24 in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers that collected the fossils at China’s Chuanlinggou Formation think they represent examples of Qingshania magnifica, which look like filamented tubes made of up to 20 barrel-shaped cells stacked on each other. Some of the samples had spores, which provides evidence that Q. magnifica likely reproduced asexually, the authors wrote in the study

These filaments show a certain degree of complexity” based on their variation in appearance, study co-author Lanyun Miao, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, said in a statement.

The first prokaryotes, or microscopic single-celled organisms without a distinct nucleus, likely emerged by 3.9 billion years ago. But it wasn’t until 1.65 billion years ago that the first single-celled eukaryotes, the group that includes all plant and animal life on Earth, showed up in the fossil record in sediments from northern China and northern Australia

This new study shows that Q. magnifica appeared relatively shortly after that, suggesting that the branch of eukaryotes acquired multicellularity early in its evolutionary history.

“Multicellularity is a prerequisite for any definition of modern complex life, so to reset the timescale on such a foundational event has significant repercussions for how we think about the lineage that would eventually give rise to our own species!” Jack Craig, an assistant professor of research at Temple University who studies evolutionary genomics and was not involved in the study

This research builds on findings from 1989, when a group of researchers discovered and described the first sample of Q. magnifica in the Chuan linggou Formation.

“Owing to the poor image quality of the material described and its publication in a relatively difficult-to-access journal, this report has received little attention since its publication,” the authors of the new paper wrote.

So they decided to revisit this area in 2015, and uncovered 279 microscopic fossils, all but one of which were Q. magnifica. Further analysis also showed that the organisms had adjoining cell walls, suggesting that they could have obtained energy from photosynthesis, similar to modern-day algae.