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A comment on Scientists Discover Ancient 'Lost World' That Rewrites History of Life on Earth.

Re:Scientists Discover Ancient 'Lost World' That Rewrites Hi... by gpvos on Monday June 19, 2023 @10:51AM (#36391724)
Some context: between 1.8 and 0.8 billion (milliard) years ago, the Earth went through a period colloquially called the "Boring Billion", when tectonically and climatically almost nothing happened. Evolutionarily, however, this was the period when multicellularity and sexual reproduction developed. I guess that those developments were really complicated, so it took a lot of time before evolution chanced upon them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_Billion

https://youtu.be/0sbwUeTyDb0 (recommended video and series)

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Re:Scientists Discover Ancient 'Lost World' That Rewrites Hi... by borissk on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:54PM (#36396958)
I've read somewhere that we're the second wave of multi-cellular organisms that evolved on Earth - coming from worms, fish, tetrapods, etc. But there's evidence of an earlier evolution of multi-cellularity, those poor things dying out and leaving very few fossils.
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Re:Scientists Discover Ancient 'Lost World' That Rewrites Hi... by gpvos on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @03:06AM (#36400655)
Maybe you are referring to the Ediacaran period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota , which happened a bit later. Something like it can have happened before that as well, but that is more the subject of current research like in the featured article.
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