Oldest fossils of large seaweeds, possible animals tell story about oxygen in an ancient ocean
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 13:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Almost 600 million years ago, before the rampant evolution of diverse life forms known as the Cambrian explosion, a community of seaweeds and worm-like animals lived in a quiet deep-water niche under the sea near what is now Lantian, a small village in Anhui Province of South China. Then they simply died, leaving some 3,000 nearly pristine fossils preserved between beds of black shale deposited in oxygen-free waters...