Bizarre Sea Creature Lived HOW Long Ago?

A new fossilized, cigar-shaped creature that lived about 520 million years ago has been unearthed in Morocco. The newfound species, Helicocystis moroccoensis, has “characteristics that place it as the most primitive echinoderm that has fivefold symmetry,” said study co-author Andrew Smith, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, referring to the group of animals that includes starfish and sea urchins.

Modern echinoderms typically have five-point symmetry, such as the five arms of the starfish or the sand dollar’s distinctive pattern. The primitive sea creature, described today (June 25) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, could even change its body shape from slender to stumpy.

A stepping-stone for oxygen on Earth

For most terrestrial life on Earth, oxygen is necessary for survival. But the planet’s atmosphere did not always contain this life-sustaining substance, and one of science’s greatest mysteries is how and when oxygenic photosynthesis first began. Now, geobiologists have found evidence of a precursor photosystem involving manganese that predates cyanobacteria, the first group of organisms to release oxygen into the environment via photosynthesis.

Geology: Making gold green: New non-toxic method for mining gold

Geology: Where Does All Earth's Gold Come From? Precious Metals the Result of Meteorite Bombardment, Rock Analysis Finds

Excited, but cold: Scientists unveil the secret of a reaction for prebiotic synthesis of organic matter

WOW! Is this what we’re from?
How is it that a complex organism evolves from a pile of dead matter? How can lifeless materials become organic molecules that are the bricks of animals and plants? Scientists have been trying to answer these questions for ages. Researchers have now disclosed the secret of a reaction that has to do with the synthesis of complex organic matter before the origin of life.

Pareiasaur: Bumpy beast was a desert dweller

During the Permian era, animal and plant life were dispersed broadly across Pangea, and a new study supports the idea that there was an isolated desert in the middle of Pangea with its own fauna. Roaming this desert was a very distinctive creature known as a pareiasaur. Pareiasaurs were large, herbivorous reptiles that were common across Pangea during the Middle and Late Permian, about 266-252 million years ago.

Oddest couple share 250 million year old burrow

Scientists have discovered a world first association while scanning a 250 million year old fossilized burrow from the Karoo Basin of South Africa. The burrow revealed two unrelated vertebrate animals nestled together and fossilized after being trapped by a flash flood event.

New dinosaur fossil discovered in China: Meat-eating dinosaur from late Jurassic period was less than a year old

Fossil remains in northwestern China have been identified as a new species of small theropod, or meat-eating, dinosaur.

'Massive' cliff fall on coast path

A ‘massive’ rockfall has closed the Southwest coastal footpath at St Oswalds bay in Dorset, UK. (Near Durdle Door).

Dinosaur predecessors gain ground in wake of world's biggest biodiversity crisis

Newly discovered fossils from 10 million years after Earth’s greatest mass extinction reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs taking hold in Tanzania and Zambia in the mid-Triassic period, many millions of years before dinosaur relatives were seen in the fossil record elsewhere on Earth.