It would push back the known eukaryotic microfossil record by 750 million years. More work is required to determine if the Turee Creek Group microfossils were left behind by eukaryotic organisms, but the possibility would have significant implications. “When compared to modern organisms, the microfossils more closely resembled a type of algae than simpler prokaryotic life - organisms like bacteria, for example - that existed prior to the Great Oxidation Event.”Īlgae, along with all other plants and animals, are eukaryotes, more complex life whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus. “This is something that’s been hypothesized, but there’s just such little fossil record that we haven’t been able to test it.”

“What we show is the first direct evidence linking the changing environment during the event with an increase in the complexity of life.” “The Great Oxidation Event is thought to have triggered a mass extinction and opened the door for the development of more complex life, but little direct evidence had existed in the fossil record before the discovery of the new microfossils,” said Professor Erica Barlow, a researcher at the University of New South Wales and the Pennsylvania State University.

Archetypal large spherical aggregate (SA) microfossils with wide, kerogen-free surrounding rinds from the 2.4-billion-year-old Turee Creek Group in Western Australia microfossil shape is most commonly spherical, with radial symmetry: (a) plane polarised light (PPL) image of slightly ellipsoidal SAs oriented with long axes perpendicular to bedding note the even width of rinds dense, bedded organic matter (OM) that directly underlies the left SA appears to be deflected downwards, around the SA and its surrounding rind (arrow) (b, c) and (d, e) show specimens in both PPL and cross polarised light (XPL), highlighting the very fine microquartz grainsize within the rinds (arrow in e) carbonate rhombs are occasionally observed intruding into microfossil rinds these are visible in a (left SA, right side of rind), in b, c (left side of rind), and in e (right side of rind).

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