I reported a while back that there was a possibility that the phosphatized pre-Cambrian Doushantuo specimens might not be embryos—they might be a particular class of bacteria—but there may be evidence against that hypothesis. John Lynch finds a description of more advanced embryos, intermediate stages that would link at least some of the blastulae described so far to unambiguous multicellular organisms.
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I've written about the spectacular phospatized embryos of the Doushantuo formation before. It's a collection of exceptionally well preserved small multicellular organisms, so well preserved that we can even look at cellular organelles. And they're pre-Cambrian, as much as 630 million years old.…
Scanning electron photomicrographs of two fossil embryo specimens from the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation in South China.
From EurekaAlert:
A decade ago, Shuhai Xiao, associate professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech, and his colleagues discovered thousands of 600-million-year-old…
Almost ten years ago, there was a spectacular fossil discovery in China: microfossils, tiny organisms preserved by phosphatization, that revealed amazing levels of fine detail. These specimens were identified as early animal embryos on the basis of a number of properties.
The cells were dimpled…
New research published in Science on the origins of multicellular life reveals an interesting pattern. The Cambrian Explosion may have been samosamo.
What is evolution about? Why are there different species, rather than just one (or a few) highly variable species? Is there a close…
Gah! Just last week I told my students about the Doushantuo embryos and mentioned that they might not actually be metazoan embryos...now I need to go back and qualify that qualification.
Covering cutting-edge research in undergraduate classes is hard. Oh, why do we have to pay attention to new data? It makes things so confusing. Why can't truths just be eternal and unalterable? Oh, right. This is science, and we live in the real world.
We must save the embryos. They are like snowflakes...
I suspect that the truth hasn't changed, but rather our knowledge and understanding is changing. I tend to think of truth as eternal and unalterable.
Sure, sure, you'll gladly kill babies but you want to 'save' a few cell fossils that might be embryos?
I say we ABORT the Doushantuo embryos!
.
.
(oh wait, geology aborted them ages ago ...)
Good clarification. What actually happened is (barring time travel) unalterable and eternal, and what we think we know is just our interpretation based on the evidence we have.
I guess I should've put truths in quotation marks, as in "beliefs that are held no matter how much evidence is amassed against them".
Frank and PZ,
These are interesting specimens no doubt, but they may not be enough to save the embryo hypothesis. Presently there aren't any fossils representing unambiguous multi-cellular organisms in the Doushantuo that haven't been challenged as diagenetic artifacts - nor are there any gastrulas. Pretty surprising given the millions of specimens available isn't it? Also, you can see in these pictures that the fancy-looking holes on the outside are irregularly-spaced and coalesce into grooves, which is more characteristic of taphonomic (preservational) artifacts than primary biological features. It must be remembered that what we are looking at here are phosphatic structures that are commonly encrusted and impregnated with mineralogical features that often have little or nothing to do with the organism's primary biological features. Many of the Doushantuo structures are riddled with internal tunnels and grooves (some of which are spirals) - again artifacts of their preservation (see Xiao and Knoll 1999 Figure 7). When the paper comes out, look carefully and critically at the images and decide for yourselves.
I always thought the Doushantuo embryos were very odd finds. All of this has encouraged me to go through the literature on these fossils in more detail (although I don't have the expertise required to assess possible taphonomic artifacts, etc., so I'm not sure I'll be a good critical reader).
Right. As though I'll ever have time to do all that reading...
Other, admittedly contentious eukaryote fossils are dismissed in a forthcoming paper
Cheers
Joe Meert