{"id":5595,"date":"2024-07-29T11:38:12","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T11:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/29\/complex-life-on-earth-began-around-1-5-billion-years-earlier-than-thought-study-claims\/"},"modified":"2024-07-29T11:38:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-29T11:38:12","slug":"complex-life-on-earth-began-around-1-5-billion-years-earlier-than-thought-study-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/29\/complex-life-on-earth-began-around-1-5-billion-years-earlier-than-thought-study-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Complex life on Earth began around 1.5 billion years earlier than thought, study claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Complex life on Earth began around 1.5 billion years earlier than thought, according to a new study.  <\/p>\n

Scientists were broadly of the view that animals first emerged on Earth 635 million years ago, but the latest study, led by a research team at Cardiff<\/strong> University, has found signs of a much earlier ecosystem.<\/p>\n

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The ecosystem was found in the Franceville Basin near Gabon.<\/p>\n

The study uncovers environmental evidence of the very first experiments in the evolution of complex life.<\/p>\n

It describes an episode of unique underwater volcanic activity after two continents collided.<\/p>\n

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Scientists have widely debated the validity of large fossils of macroorganisms dating back 2.1 billion years.<\/p>\n

Earlier discovery<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Ernest Chi Fru is the paper’s lead author and reader at Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.<\/p>\n

“We already know that <\/strong>increases in marine phosphorus and seawater oxygen concentrations are linked to an episode of biological evolution around 635 million years ago,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Our study adds another, much earlier episode into the record, 2.1 billion years ago.”<\/p>\n

The research team found environmental change which might have triggered their evolution.<\/p>\n

But the life forms did not take a global foothold at this time, according to researchers.<\/p>\n

This was due to the restricted nature of the water mass and the hostile conditions that existed for billions of years later.<\/p>\n

Researchers believe this points to a possible two-step evolution of complex life on Earth.<\/p>\n

“While the first attempt failed to spread, the second went on to create the animal biodiversity we see on Earth today,” Dr Chi Fru added.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Complex life on Earth began around 1.5 billion years earlier than thought, according to a new study.  Scientists were broadly of the view that animals first emerged on Earth 635 million years ago, but the latest study, led by a research team at Cardiff University, has found signs of a much earlier ecosystem. The ecosystem <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}