Oldest biodiversity found in Gabonese marine ecosystem
Friday, June 27, 2014 - 07:31
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Researchers from the CNRS and the Université de Poitiers, working in collaboration with teams from the Université de Lille 1, Université de Rennes 1, the French National History Museum and Ifremer, have discovered, in clay sediments from Gabon, fossils of the oldest multicellular organisms ever found (Nature, 2010). In total, more than 400 fossils dating back 2.1 billion years have been collected, including dozens of new types. The detailed analysis of these finds, published on June 25, 2014 in Plos One, reveals a broad biodiversity composed of micro and macroscopic organisms of highly varied size and shape that evolved in a marine ecosystem.