Despite the protracted history of life on earth spanning well over 3.8 Ga, fossil record of the Precambrian (>543 Ma) largely documents only microscopic life. The mostly simple Precambrian life forms were followed by a sudden explosive radiation of multicellular animals at the turn of the Cambrian period (543-490 Ma) between 530 and 520 Ma ago, when almost two-thirds of the animal phyla make th...

Chia-Wei Li et al. describe microfossils found in Doushantuo phosphate rocks from Guizhou Province, South China that are about 580 million years old (1). Well-preserved macroscopic multicellular fossils associated with prokaryotic and eukaryotic microfossils from the same source rocks have been documented in several studies (2– 6). The Doushantuo fossils are outstanding in both preservation qua...

Organically preserved algal microfossils from the Ringwood evaporite deposit in the Gillen Member of the Bitter Springs Formation (late Precambrian of central Australia) are of small size, low diversity, and probable prokaryotic affinities. These rather primitive characteristics appear to reflect the stressful conditions that prevailed in a periodically stagnant, hypersaline lagoon. This assemb...

Sponge remains have been identified in the Early Vendian Doushantuo phosphate deposit in central Guizhou (South China), which has an age of approximately 580 million years ago. Their skeletons consist of siliceous, monaxonal spicules. All are referred to as the Porifera, class Demospongiae. Preserved soft tissues include the epidermis, porocytes, amoebocytes, sclerocytes, and spongocoel. Among ...

the bundelkhand-aravalli craton is the most important lithotectonic unit in the central and western india where paleoproterozoic aravalli supracrustal sequence has been deposited over an archaean basement, the latter also known as the banded gneiss complex (bgc). a ne-trending linear metasedimentary sequence, designated as the jahazpur belt occurs along the eastern fringe of the aravalli superg...

Life on Earth has existed for at least 3.5 billion years. Yet, relatively little is known of its evolution during the first two billion years, due to the scarceness and generally poor preservation of fossilized biological material. Cyanobacteria, formerly known as blue green algae were among the first crown Eubacteria to evolve and for more than 2.5 billion years they have strongly influenced E...