Oldest (1 Billion years) Green Algae Fossil Discovered in China
The Scientist
A newly discovered fossil species of green algae indicates that photosynthesis originated in plants at least 1 billion years ago, paleobiologists reported in Nature Ecology & Evolution yesterday (February 24). The discovery of Proterocladus antiquus helps pinpoint what has been a very broad estimation of when the chlorophyte group of green algae, the relatives of modern plants ancestors, evolved.
Previously, the oldest widely accepted fossilized green algae was about 800 million years old, Timothy Gibson, a postdoc at Dartmouth College who was not involved with the study, tells Live Science. This work confirms what many have expected based on the existing, though sparse fossil record, which is that green algae likely existed about a billion years ago.
P. antiquus was a marine, multicellular eukaryote with an asymmetric branched structure about 2 mm in lengthmaking it one of the largest organisms of its time, according to The Guardian. There are some modern green seaweeds that look very similar to the fossils that we found, coauthor Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech says in a press release. A group of modern green seaweeds, known as siphonocladaleans, are particularly similar in shape and size to the fossils we found.
Xiaos postdoc Qing Tang found more than 1,000 P. antiquus fossils while using a microscope to examine rock samples from the silty shale and mudstone of whats known as the Nanfen Formation in northern China, deposited roughly 1 billion years ago. Tang tells Live Science that the algaes oxygen production may have had a significant effect on the marine ecosystem.
The problem Young Earth Creationists have is that they can't visualize the immense amount of time life has existed and how much time there's been for it to evolve.