In Greenland A controversial record fossil
Sea sponges are simple but they are animals, and scientists know that they have inhabited the planet for a long time.
Genetic analyzes show that modern sponges emerged during the geological period known as the Neoproterozoic, between 1,000 and 541 million years ago, although until now they have found hardly any fossils that directly show their existence.
This Wednesday, the journal
Nature
publishes an investigation that describes the discovery in Canada of some fossilized structures that appear to be sea sponges and that are 890 million years old, according to their discoverers.
If their estimates are correct, it would be the oldest fossilized animal,
ahead of the oldest sponge fossils
confirmed so far
by 350 million years
.
First forms of life
Elizabeth Turner, a researcher at Laurentian University in Ontario, discovered the fossils while examining rock samples from
ancient reefs in northwestern Canada.
The structures he found closely resemble the fibrous skeleton found inside horny sponges, a modern type of sponge used to make commercial bath sponges.
Scientists believe these structures may be the fossilized remains of sponges that lived on those calcium carbonate reefs roughly 90 million years before Earth's oxygen levels rose to levels necessary to support animal life.
If it is confirmed that these structures are sponges, it would imply that there were animals that developed independently of this increase in oxygen, and that there were life forms that survived the glaciations that took place between 720 and 635 million years ago.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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