N.W.T. fossils believed to be oldest evidence of animals

Traces of primitive organism found on mountaintop in Mackenzie range are thought to be about 850 million years old

By Randy Boswell, Vancouver Sun – May 6, 2009

Canadian scientists probing a mountaintop in the Northwest Territories have discovered what they believe is the oldest evidence of animals on Earth—about 850-million-year-old traces of a primitive, sponge-like organism that could push back direct proof of the origin of humanity’s own kingdom of life by an astonishing 200 million years.

The microscopic but distinctively patterned remains—unearthed from a dramatic pinnacle in the Mackenzie Mountains about 800 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife—are interpreted by the research team as rock-encased residues from the decomposed tissues of a primordial sea creature that was the earliest common ancestor of all animals, including humans. The organism, believed to have lived in the nooks of a reef from a long-lost ocean, represents a stage of life “before sponges and other animals we know today evolved,” University of Laval geologist Fritz Neuweiler, told Canwest News Service.

Experts in evolution have long postulated that animals must have been developing eons before the existence of known creatures that left easy-to-see skeletal fossils during the Cambrian and Ediacaran geological eras, reaching back about 635 million years ago.

“If you want to go back to the very origins of animals, you can’t be looking for that,” says Laurentian University paleontologist Elizabeth Turner, one of the three co-authors of a paper detailing the Canadian discovery in the latest issue of the journal Geology.