It might be a grape size protist. Those were the days...
A single-celled ball about the size of a grape may provide an explanation for one of the mysteries of fossil history.
Writing in Current Biology, researchers say the creature leaves tracks on the seabed which mirror fossilised tracks left up to 1.8 billion years ago.
Many palaeontologists believe only multi-celled organisms could have made these tracks.
This has been difficult to confirm as no multi-cellular fossils of such an age have ever been found.
But it is not a grape or even sloce. It is a protist of some sort. News story here, I've not yet seen the published paper (too busy count votes and stuff).
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Since the first living things appeared on the planet, the biggest among them have become increasingly bigger. Over 3.6 billion years of evolution, life's maximum size has shot up by 16 orders of magnitude - about 10 quadrillion times - from single cells to the massive sequoias of today (below…
A protist is a single celled eukaryotic organism, and they are usually pretty small. You can often see them, though! Before you put that sample of pond water under the microscope, take a close look: Many protists are at the boundary of visibility for humans.
Then, there are the giant protists…
The intelligent design creationists are jubilant — a paper has been published that shows that organisms were front-loaded with genes for future function! It describes "'latent' or 'preexistent' evolutionary potential" in our history, they say.
One small problem. The paper says nothing of the kind…
My advisor has recently got me listening to Whad'ya Know. My first reaction: It's like Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Only not as funny, not as interesting, and not as good. I've been downloading the podcasts for the past couple of weeks, and I'm not sure whether I'll keep subscribing in iTunes.
I'm…
Grape-sized protist!? Do tell!
How can a single cell be the size of a grape? What's in the membrain? How do the nutrients move around? Does it have a nucleus?
Beautiful article! Thak you BBC and thank you for the link.
And now, how long will it be for the Creationists to say this disproves evo, and how long before the IDists say this proves design?
Jeez I hate those idiots.
I read somewhere that an egg is a single cell, so the largest single cell is an ostrich's egg. After that, a grape-sized protist isn't so hard to swallow!
Actually that kind of an egg is a very small ovum packing a very big lunch (yolk). It takes a lot of energy to do all that growing and developing.
So, grape sized? pseudopodia? I want to know more. Current Biology wants $30 to read the paper. Sigh.
Rick: You are inspiring me to go read the paper. I'll do it today and post about it.
Right ... eggs are "large cells" but not really. Its kind of a misnomer.
But one could see how, in a world without grapes living in the grape size-niche, protists could be doing the grape thing. Rolling around being grape-like.