Yukon fossils represent a pivotal moment in evolution

[Ryft]

Boswell, Randy (2011, June 11). "Yukon fossils represent a pivotal moment in evolution." Postmedia News.

A Canadian mountaintop has yielded hundreds of microscopic fossils representing, more clearly than ever before, a pivotal moment in evolution: the birth of biomineralization, a critical development for animal life that eventually allowed organisms—including humans—to exploit the Earth's elemental ingredients to create bones, teeth or protective shells.

A team of U.S. and British scientists led by Phoebe Cohen ... probed microfossils previously excavated ... [from] exposed rock layers formed about 800 million years ago. Created from the sediments of a shallow, oxygen-starved sea, the Yukon rocks have preserved the remains of armour-like mineral plates manufactured by an ancient species of single-celled eukaryotes ...

"These fossils represent the oldest definitive evidence of active biomineralization—that is, of an organism taking in a mineral and making a hard part out of it (as opposed to precipitating a mineral on its outside, a sort of passive process)," Cohen said ... "There are other pieces of evidence that are similar in age, but are less conclusive than these (Yukon) fossils."

Canada's great geological diversity—including some of the world's oldest rocks and vast tracts of exposed fossils—attracts many international researchers working to record the story of evolution as it unfolded at microscopic scale in the dawning era of life.

Read more, http://www.canada.com/technology/Yukon+f...z1P4Tejrt2

[reverendjeremiah]

Great post.

Always nice to meet a theist who understands the importance of Biology.

[5thHorseman]

i'll second that. nice post.

[Violet]

Something of importance comes from a canadian mountaintop? That's almost as nonsensical as it coming from Alaska.

Hi Ryft

[Rayaan]

Thanks for sharing ...and of course evolution is real ... I mean, how much more evidence do religious people need to believe in that?

[Minimalist]

As long as we are talking about fossils....this one could blow the Out of Africa crowd out of the water.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/...uman_genus

Early members of the genus Homo, possibly direct ancestors of people today, may have evolved in Asia and then gone to Africa, not vice versa as many scientists have assumed.

Most paleoanthropologists have favored an African origin for the potential human ancestor Homo erectus. But new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton and his colleagues.

[Ryft]

As long as we are talking about fossils, this one could blow the Out of Africa crowd out of the water ... [snip rest]

As evidence builds, theories are refined or replaced. I am not particularly married to the out-of-Africa theory so it would not be too devastating to find out that it is wrong. It has never quite added up right for me anyway so I have always been open to a better theory. Thanks for the link to this.

[Cinjin]

I don't understand. How does that work with Adam and Eve?

Wait. Was the garden of eden in Canada!??! When does the rib story come into play??










*broken sarcasm filter* good post.

[Ryft]

I don't understand. How does that work with Adam and Eve?

Cute. Anyway, since you are new here (joined 3 March 2011) you are probably unaware that I reject young-earth creationism. (I will not get into that discussion here, but simply note it for your sake, so you don't put me in categories I do not belong in.)

[Shell B]

As long as we are talking about fossils, this one could blow the Out of Africa crowd out of the water ... [snip rest]

As evidence builds, theories are refined or replaced. I am not particularly married to the out-of-Africa theory so it would not be too devastating to find out that it is wrong. It has never quite added up right for me anyway so I have always been open to a better theory. Thanks for the link to this.

I do not think it is impossible that convergent evolution may have happened in the span of human history as well. Why couldn't we have humans in Asia and Africa, evolving separately, but filling the same ecological niche? Obviously, unlike other convergent species, we have covered the globe, so there is no need for more than one human species on Earth any longer. However, that does not mean that it did not start that way.