Engineering technology pinpoints earliest signs of a...(l research team from America Australia a...)

Date:2/5/2009

l research team from America, Australia and the UK, represents the oldest evidence for animals in the fossil record, and the first evidence for animals predating the termination of the Marinoan glaciations, the second of the two major glacial episodes of the Neoproterozoic which terminated 635 million years ago.

Dr Gordon Love, from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, the principal author on the study said: "By establishing a robust stratigraphic and temporal framework for the Neoproterozoic-Cambrian South Oman Salt Basin strata and by employing state-of-the-art analytical techniques for biomarker recovery and analysis then we have unearthed the first fossil evidence for Cryogenian animals from the detection of anomalously high amount of distinctive steroids produced by sponges. We believe that we are converging on the correct date for the divergence of complex multicellular animal life, between 635 and 750 million years ago. It appears that the climatic shock of the two major glacial episodes of the Neoproterozoic caused a major reorganisation of marine ecosystems including the evolution of animal feeders living on the seafloor. In future, we and others will be screening other sedimentary rocks for animal steroids around and before the first glaciation event, the Sturtian, but so far no convincing signals have been detected prior to the Sturtian glaciation."

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Contact: Lindsay Brooke lindsay.brooke@nottingham.ac.uk 44-011-595-15751 University of Nottingham Source:Eurekalert

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