Early complex life lived on seafloors for millions of years

Exploring the Origins of Complex Life: Benthic Organisms as the Earliest Forms

Paleontologists have studied 1.75 billion-year-old microfossils from the ancient ocean floor of Australia, revealing that early eukaryotes—the ancestors of all plants, animals, and fungi—thrived in patches of oxygen-rich ocean floor for over a billion years before they ventured into the open ocean. Eukaryotic fossils from Northern Territory, Australia. Image credit: Lechte et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10533-4. [...] The post Exploring the Ori…

Study: Early Complex Life Forms Were Bottom-Dwellers

Analyzing 1.75-billion-year-old microfossils from ancient Australian seabeds, paleontologists say ancient eukaryotes -- the ancestors of every plant, animal and fungus -- huddled in oxygenated seafloor patches for over a billion years before breaking free into open water. The post Study: Early Complex Life Forms Were Bottom-Dwellers appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Early Complex Life Clung to Oxygenated Seafloors for Hundreds of Millions of Years

By Harrison Tasoff, UCSB From the highest mountains to the deepest ocean, the driest desert to the lushest jungle, Earth displays a dazzling array of lifeforms. And eukaryotes account for […] The post Early Complex Life Clung to Oxygenated Seafloors for Hundreds of Millions of Years appeared first on edhat.

Early complex life lived on seafloors for millions of years

Scientists now have a better idea of what our early ancestors looked like, where they lived, and how they functioned.