WERE these the first cells to talk? Quite possibly. At 2.1 billion years old, this fossil could be the earliest known multicellular life form.
The earliest life to show multicellularity is hotly debated, mainly because of questions of definition. Until now, the 1.9 billion year old Grypania fossils, found in Michigan, were widely seen as the first clusters of organised and communicating cells. However, the new fossils (pictured), from Gabon, west Africa, may take the prize.
The 250 or so irregular blobs, up to 12 centimetres in length, have scalloped edges, suggesting an organised and growing colony of coordinated cells. “Single cells don’t normally grow to that size,” says Stefan Bengtson from the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, one of the study authors (Nature, ).
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While other soft-bodied creatures of that age have long since vanished, these organisms were preserved because their body parts were replaced by pyrite, and the sediment around them wasn’t buried or cooked.
It is thought likely they emerged at this time to take advantage of a rise in atmospheric oxygen, which began around 200 million years earlier.
Getting bigger has its benefits. “It could have made the organisms more stable, and better able to weather storms,” says co-author Donald Canfield of the Nordic Centre for Earth Evolution in Odense, Denmark.
