A group of scientists has unearthed the remains of an ancient lost world of mysterious organisms believed to have existed 1.6 billion years ago. The discovery builds on the groundbreaking detection of what scientists call the “protosterol biota” in ancient rocks from Australia.
The scientists say these microscopic creatures help fill a huge gap in human understanding regarding the early evolution of a family of life-forms with nucleated cells known as eukaryotes. These creatures are believed to have evolved in wetlands around the world a billion years before plants and animals arose. However, they managed to hide from the fossil record until this discovery.
Scientists are working hard to find the foundations of how humans and eukaryotes were connected during what they call Earth’s “middle ages,” believed to have begun about 1.7 billion years ago. This medieval age lasted a billion years as the simple organisms of that time began to evolve into more complex life. This newly discovered history of the lost world may finally give us some important information about the creatures of this period.
Witnesses of the old, lost world
The researchers say the eukaryotes discovered represent “early stages of eukaryotic evolution that do not yet have a full sterol biosynthetic pathway.” This makes them “witnesses of the ancient, lost world” of organisms, the ancient world of root-group eukaryotes, which researchers say was likely more abundant during Earth’s middle ages.
“It was a real eureka moment for us to realize that 1.64 billion-year-old rocks contain fossil proto-steroids,” Benjamin Nettersheim, co-leader of the new study, told Vice. The protosterol biota that lived during this period is likely to be the direct or indirect ancestors of present-day eukaryotes. They’re more likely to be cousins, the researchers say.
However, it is not easy to determine or even predict what these organisms look like or even how they move around our planet, as they are known only by the chemical byproducts they form. The research has been published in the journal Nature, and by studying organisms more deeply, the researchers hope to learn more about this ancient lost world, and even more about the secrets of evolution.
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