Big Blobs Change View of Evolution

DonShula84 · Mar 28, 2009

On a submersible dive off the Bahamas, Mikhail V. Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and several colleagues were seeking big-eyed, glowing animals adapted to darkness.

Yet as they cruised above the seafloor, the team was distracted by hundreds of bizarre, sediment-coated balls the size of grapes. Each sat at the end of a sinuous track in the seafloor ooze. Indeed, the balls appeared to have made the tracks; some even seemed to have rolled upslope.

The team collected specimens and identified the creatures as giant protozoans, Gromia sphaerica, each one a single large cell with an organic shell, or "test." When cleaned of sediment, the test feels like grape skin, but squishier, Matz says.

Surprisingly, the tracks on the Bahamian seafloor resemble grooves found in sedimentary rocks formed as long as 1.8 billion years ago. The ancient grooves, bisected by a low ridge, had constituted the only evidence that multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animals, such as worms, might have evolved so early in Earth's history.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090328/sc_livescience/bigblobschangeviewofevolution

Celtkin · Mar 28, 2009

Great find bro. It's an interesting possibility if the billion year old grooves were indeed made by the same group of protists.

Here is a picture of a cleaned up Gromia sphaerica

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27827279/

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