Scientists studying ancient Australian rocks uncovered more than 12,000 fossils from some of the oldest known eukaryotes on Earth. These early complex cells lived in settings ranging from coastal mudflats to the open sea, but only where oxygen was available. Oxygen-free environments contained simpler microbes instead.
The findings strengthen the idea that oxygen played a crucial role in the emergence of complex life. 1.7-billion-year-old fossils reveal a crucial clue to the rise of complex life. They are from drill holes bored hundreds of metres below the surface by mineral exploration companies decades ago.
Some of these cores at the Northern Territory Geological Survey are mudstone – a type of sedimentary rock formed from hardened seafloor mud. The companies that drilled these cores were largely unaware that within these mudstones were fossils of microscopic organisms buried on the seafloor of an ancient inland sea that covered much of northern Australia over 1.5 billion years ago. As our new study, published in Nature, shows, these fossils are crucial for addressing a longstanding puzzle about the major evolutionary leap that led to all complex life on Earth: the origin of eukaryotes.
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