Fossils Likely To Rewrite The Tree Of Life

Fossils discovered recently in the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh, a good 400 million years older than the oldest plant-like fossils ever found, suggest that the complex organisms appeared earlier than assumed.

Researchers from the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who uncovered a pair of 1.6 billion-year-old fossils in Madhya Pradesh's Chitrakoot region, claimed that it was an antique find. They published an X-ray tomographic picture, tinted to show detail, of the fossil of thread-like red algae that was unearthed in central India. According to researchers, the fossils may be the oldest plant-like life discovered on the Earth. So far, the oldest known red algae are 1.2 billion years old and the oldest dinosaur fossils, found in Africa, are about 240 million years old. The finding in Madhya Pradesh suggests that advanced multi-cellular life evolved much earlier...