21st Century Wire says…
Will we ever know the real history of our past?
Professor Maoyan Zhu of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China has presented findings that suggest our current understanding of evolutionary history is entirely incorrect:
“Our discovery pushes back nearly 1 billion years the appearance of macroscopic, multi-cellular eukaryotes compared to previous research,”
“[The find] totally renews current knowledge on the early history of life.”
The oldest multi-celled eukaryotes found previously were only 600 million years old.
French Professor Abderrazak El Albani, however, has doubts that the finding is exactly what Zhu thinks it is:
“The morphological measures, on their own, are absolutely insufficient to tell us if these organisms were multicellular, eukaryotes or complex,”
This is not the first time Zhu and Albani have engaged in scientific disagreement, as Zhu has previously called a finding from Albani claiming to have found a 2.1 billion year old organism “largely discredited.”
Perhaps life has evolved on other planets in the universe even earlier, and faster, than Zhu’s findings are suggesting for Earth.
What advanced lifeforms might exist elsewhere in the universe?
READ MORE ON SCIENCE: 21st Century Wire Science Files
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