Fossil ‘balls’ are 1 billion years old and could be Earth’s oldest known multicellular life

Scientists have discovered a rare evolutionary “missing link” dating to the earliest chapter of life on Earth. It’s a microscopic, ball-shaped fossil that bridges the gap between the very first living creatures — single-celled organisms — and more complex multicellular life.

The spherical fossil contains two different types of cells: round, tightly-packed cells with very thin cell walls at the center of the ball, and a surrounding outer layer of sausage-shaped cells with thicker walls. Estimated to be 1 billion years old, this is the oldest known fossil of a multicellular organism, researchers reported in a new study. 

Life on Earth is widely accepted as having evolved from single-celled forms that emerged in the primordial oceans. However, this fossil was found in sediments from the bottom of what was once a lake in the northwest Scottish Highlands. The discovery offers a new perspective on the evolutionary pathways that shaped multicellular life, the scientists said in the study. 

“The origins of complex multicellularity and the origin of animals are considered two of the most important events in the history of life on Earth,” said lead study author Charles Wellman, a professor in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

“Our discovery sheds new light on both of these,” Sheffield said in a statement.

Today, little evidence remains of Earth’s earliest organisms. Microscopic fossils estimated to be 3.5 billion years old are credited with being the oldest fossils of life on Earth, though some experts have questioned whether chemical clues in the so-called fossils were truly biological in origin. 

Other types of fossils associated with ancient microbes are even older: Sediment ripples in Greenland date to 3.7 billion years ago, and hematite tubes in Canada date between 3.77 billion and 4.29 billion years ago. Fossils of the oldest known algae, ancestor to all of Earth’s plants, are about 1 billion years old, and the oldest sign of animal life — chemical traces linked to ancient sponges — are at least 635 million and possible as much as 660 million years old,  previously reported.

The tiny fossilized cell clumps, which the scientists named Bicellum brasieri, were exceptionally well-preserved in 3D, locked in nodules of phosphate minerals that were “like little black lenses in rock strata, about one centimeter [0.4 inches] in thickness,” said lead study author Paul Strother, a research professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Boston College’s Weston Observatory. 

“We take those and slice them with a diamond saw and make thin sections out of them,” grinding the slices thin enough for light to shine through — so that the 3D fossils could then be studied under a microscope, Strother .

The researchers found not just one B. brasieri cell clump embedded in phosphate, but multiple examples of spherical clumps that showed the same dual cell structure and organization at different stages of development. This enabled the scientists to confirm that their find was once a living organism, Strother said.

“Bicellum” means “two-celled,” and “brasieri” honors the late paleontologist and study co-author, Martin Brasier. Prior to his death in 2014 in a car accident, Brasier was a professor of paleobiology at the University of Oxford in the U.K., Strother said.

Multicellular and mysterious

In the B. brasieri fossils, which measured about 0.001 inches (0.03 millimeters) in diameter, the scientists saw something they had never seen before: evidence from the fossil record marking the transition from single-celled life to multicellular organisms. The two types of cells in B. brasieri differed from each other not only in their shape, but in how and where they were organized in the organism’s “body.” 

“That’s something that doesn’t exist in normal unicellular organisms,” Strother told Live Science. “That amount of structural complexity is something that we normally associate with complex multicellularity,” such as in animals, he said.

It’s unknown what type of multicellular lineage B. brasieri represents, but its round cells lacked rigid walls, so it probably wasn’t a type of algae, according to the study. In fact, the shape and organization of its cells “is more consistent with a holozoan origin,” the authors wrote. (Holozoa is a group that includes multicellular animals and single-celled organisms that are animals’ closest relatives). 

The Scottish Highlands site — formerly an ancient lake — where the scientists found B. brasieri presented another intriguing puzzle piece about early evolution. Earth’s oldest forms of life are typically thought to have emerged from the ocean because most ancient fossils were preserved in marine sediments, Strother explained. “There aren’t that many lake deposits of this antiquity, so there’s a bias in the rock record toward a marine fossil record rather than a freshwater record,” he added.

B. brasieri is therefore an important clue that ancient lake ecosystems could have been as important as the oceans for the early evolution of life. Oceans provide organisms with a relatively stable environment, while freshwater ecosystems are more prone to extreme changes in temperature and alkalinity — such variations could have spurred evolution in freshwater lakes when more complex life on Earth was in its infancy, Strother said.

Medieval Coin in Canada Challenges Story of North American Discovery

A gold coin discovered in Newfoundland could “rewrite the history books.” Directly challenging the mainstream narrative of the discovery of North America, this coin suggests Europeans were in Newfoundland earlier than currently believed.

Exciting Discovery of Medieval Coin in Canada

This week the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador published a press release saying the controversial gold coin was found this summer by Edward Hynes, a local amateur historian.

Heralded as the oldest English coin ever discovered in Canada, this quarter noble was minted in London sometime between 1422 AD and 1427 AD, at which time it was valued at one shilling and eight pence, around $81 today.

Because this medieval coin was discontinued around 1470 AD, its discovery on a Canadian beach is presenting archaeologists with “a historical puzzle.” Is this coin the smoking gun proving European occupation in North America earlier than currently thought?

The Big North American Discovery Question

Medieval Icelandic sagas said Leif Erikson rediscovered North America in 1001 AD, but archaeologists always disregarded these accounts as being mythological. However, that all changed in 1978 when archaeologists discovered an 11th century Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Canada.

According to accepted history, the next European explorer in Newfoundland arrived in 1497 AD. This was John Cabot , the Italian navigator credited with the rediscovery of Newfoundland. However, the newly discovered medieval gold coin found in Canada predates John Cabot’s voyage by 70 years.

Jamie Brake, a Canadian Provincial archaeologist told CBC News that according to the accepted historical narrative, at the time this coin was minted “people in England were not yet aware of Newfoundland or North America,” and that is why the discovery is “so exciting.”

The researcher added that evidence of a pre-16th century occupation of the New World would be “pretty amazing and highly significant in this part of the world.”

This was a humble statement, for, in reality, such a discovery would demand a rewriting of the history, defaming John Cabot, and telling an entirely new origins story.

The Oldest English Medieval Coin Uncovered in Canada

This quarter noble gold coin dates back to the reign of King Henry VI in the 1420s AD. Thus, it is older than the “half groat” coin that was unearthed last year on the beach at the Cupids Cove Plantation provincial historic site, which dates to the 1490s.

Because this is the oldest coin ever discovered in Canada, the location where it was discovered has not been disclosed for security reasons. Brake told CBC News that everyone concerned is being “really vague about the location.” However, he did disclose that it was “found on a beach near a registered archaeological site that dates to the 1700s .”

According to Paul Berry, the former curator of the Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum, the mystery of how the medieval coin came to be where it was discovered “is likely to remain for some time.”

Berry said that while the coin was probably no longer in circulation when it was lost “that doesn’t help provide answers as to how it got there.”

While Paul Berry suggests it was dropped “after” it was out of circulation, archaeologist Brake suggests it might have been dropped by someone “before” Italian explorer Cabot got here in 1479 AD. Who then might have dropped the gold coin before Cabot’s official discovery of North America 1497 AD?

Who Rediscovered North America? Elite Explorers, or Fishermen? 

According to Newfoundland Heritage , in 1481 AD English merchant John Day sailed one of two Bristol ships, the George and the Trinity, in search of the mythical island known as Brasile. Suspiciously loaded with salt, it is suspected the two boats had possibly discovered the cod-filled Grand Banks of Newfoundland, one of the world’s richest fishing grounds.

In a letter written by John Day to the anonymous “Lord Grand Admiral,” who many believe was Christopher Columbus , the merchant said the land John Cabot discovered was “the mainland that the Bristol men found” in 1481.

And so far as to why Day didn’t announce his discovery is concerned, it is thought that he might have tried to keep the whereabouts of the bountiful fishing grounds a secret for as long as possible.

Might one of the hundreds of Bristol merchants and navigators who sailed in the western sea before John Cabot have landed in Newfoundland? If so, did they perhaps acquire something from an indigenous trader and leave a gold coin behind?

The questions are many, but for now, there stands a chance this medieval coin is the smoking gun providing evidence of pre-Cabot Europeans in North America .

24,000-Year-Old Butchered Bones Found in Canada Change Known History of North America

Archaeologists have found a set of butchered bones dating back 24,000 years in Bluefish Caves, Yukon, Canada, which are the oldest signs of human habitation ever discovered in North America. Until recently, it was believed that the culture that represented the continent’s first inhabitants was the Clovis culture.

However, the discovery of the butchered bones challenges that theory, providing evidence that human occupation preceded the arrival of the Clovis people by as much as 10,000 years.

For decades, it has been believed that the first Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia about 14,000 years ago and quickly colonized North America.

Artifacts from these ancient settlers, who have been named the Clovis culture after one of the archaeological sites in Clovis, New Mexico, have been found from Canada to the edges of North America.

However, the recent discovery of bones in Canada that show distinctive cut marks supports the perspective that there were other inhabitants of America that preceded the Clovis.

The finding was made in the Bluefish Caves in Yukon, which consists of three small caves that are now considered to hold the oldest archaeological evidence in North America. 

Researchers have found the bones of mammoths, horses, bison, caribou, wolves, foxes, antelope, bear, lion, birds and fish, many of which exhibit butchering marks made by stone tools.

The site was first excavated by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars between 1977–87, and initial dating suggested an age of 25,000 before present.  This was dismissed at the time as it did not fit with the well-established Clovis-First theory.

However, a new study published in the journal PLOS One supports the initial dating, demonstrating that humans occupied the site as early as 24,000 years ago.

As part of the study, the research team analysed 36,000 mammal bones found in the caves. Carnivore tooth marks were observed on 38 to 56% of the bone material.

A total of fifteen bone samples with cultural modifications confidently attributable to human activities were identified, while twenty more samples with “probable” cultural modifications were also found.

“The traces identified on these bones are clearly not the result of climato-edaphic factors or carnivore activity,” the researchers report. “The presence of multiple, straight and parallel marks with internal microstriations observed on both specimens eliminates carnivores as potential agents.”

The findings support the hypothesis that prior to populating the Americas, the ancestors of Native Americans spent considerable time isolated in a Beringian refuge during the Last Glacial Maximum [LGM], the last period in the Earth’s climate history during the last glacial period when ice sheets were at their greatest extension. As the researchers of the study concluded:

“In addition to proving that Bluefish Caves is the oldest known archaeological site in North America, the results offer archaeological support for the “Beringian standstill hypothesis”, which proposes that a genetically isolated human population persisted in Beringia during the LGM and dispersed from there to North and South America during the post-LGM period.”

Enormous Skull Found in Alaska May Belong to the Legendary King Bear of Inuit Mythology

An enormous, elongated polar bear skull emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site southwest of Utqiaġvik in Alaska. Experts claim that it is quite different from most modern polar bear skulls and reassure that it is one of the biggest polar bear skulls ever found.

Inuvialuit Hunters and the “Weasel Bear”

Inuvialuit have been hunting polar bears – nanuq – in Canada’s Western Arctic for many decades. Passing knowledge and understanding of polar bear hunting from one generation to the next, based on experience, is the very foundation of Inuvialuit wisdom and tradition.

Inuvialuit hunters have seen hundreds of bears during their lifetime and have taken high risks, since polar bear hunting is an extremely dangerous endeavor. However, their passion and need for survival doesn’t leave them many other choices.

If you get a chance to be around them, you will definitely hear them talking about “tiriarnaq” or “tigiaqpak” (meaning weasel bear), an incredibly unique polar bear that is enormous, narrow-bodied and moves fast like a demon.

Oral history and traditional knowledge in Inuit culture talks about “weasel” or “king” bears, and the huge, fully intact and unusually shaped polar bear skull that emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site near Utqiaġvik has added more fuel to the fire.

One of the Biggest and Most Distinct Polar Bear Skulls Ever Found

According to Anne Jensen, an Utqiaġvik-based archaeologist and leader of the excavation and research programs in the region, this is one of the biggest polar bear skulls ever found, and it appears to be different from most modern polar bear skulls. It is slender, elongated in the back and has uncommon structural features around the nasal and other areas.

“It looks different from your average polar bear,” said Anne Jensen , and added that after radiocarbon dating she and her colleagues estimate that the big bear skull comes from the period between the years 670 and 800 AD.

Despite looking different, scientifically it’s not determined yet what makes this skull differ from other found polar bear skulls and genetic testing is needed at this point to provide the scientists with more details.

“It could have been a member of a subspecies or a member of a different “race” in genetic terms — similar to the varying breeds that are found among dogs — or possibly something else entirely,” said Jensen as adn.com reports.

The Skull is Just One of the Many Newly Found Treasures

Even though the majority of the scientific world has focused almost entirely on the curiously enormous polar bear skull, the excavation of the now-eroding site, which is called Walakpa, has been successful in spotting a number of other archaeological treasures.

The excavation of the site uncovered another first for Alaska, four mummified seals, naturally preserved in an old ice cellar. Jensen’s team was able to recover one of them last summer, an adult female that was named Patou. 

Jensen said , “The excavated seal was much more modern than the polar-bear skull, dating back to only the mid-1940s. Still, it and the other seals amounted to a startling find: They are the only mummified seals ever discovered outside of Antarctica’s Dry Valley.”

Jensen also expressed her satisfaction with the new finds, since she was one of the many people who believed the Walakpa site had already been thoroughly excavated back in the late 1960’s, when Smithsonian anthropologist Dennis Stanford excavated the area for the first time.

As she says, “Everyone had the opinion — I was one of them — that he had pretty well excavated the site and there was nothing left to be done.”

Finally, the closed-up site was also considered to be intact and pretty much safe from erosion and thaw, which wasn’t the case at all – as Jensen and her colleagues told adn.