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posted by LaminatorX on Friday November 07 2014, @05:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the mighty-thews dept.

Motherboard brings us These Are The Oldest Fossilized Muscles, and They Are Rewriting Prehistory

“In recent decades, discoveries of preserved trackways and chemical evidence in older rocks, as well as molecular comparisons, have indirectly suggested that animals may have a much earlier origin than previously thought," explained lead author Alex Liu in a statement.

"The problem is that although animals are now widely expected to have been present before the Cambrian Explosion, very few of the fossils found in older rocks possess features that can be used to convincingly identify them as animals," he said.

"Instead, we study aspects of their ecology, feeding or reproduction, in order to understand what they might have been.”

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  • (Score: 1) by nishi.b on Friday November 07 2014, @11:05AM

    by nishi.b (4243) on Friday November 07 2014, @11:05AM (#113778)

    It's fascinating that we can detect and analyze molecular traces of such ancient animals in fossils, even for a jellyfish relative (soft-tissues, no bones !).
    Finding out the probable colors of dinosaur feathers is also a remarkable feat ( http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-colors-were-dinosaur-feathers [vice.com] )
    50 years ago, I don't think that most archeologist would have imagined that !

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @12:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @12:19PM (#113782)

      I want to become a successful businessman, but the nerd in me needs to point out that archaeologist have little to do with dinosaur bones. I hope you are happy.

      • (Score: 1) by nishi.b on Friday November 07 2014, @02:35PM

        by nishi.b (4243) on Friday November 07 2014, @02:35PM (#113813)

        Yep, not an english native speaker, should have written paleontologist

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @09:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @09:12PM (#113935)

      Things are going so fast these days that the person saying a thing is impossible is interrupted by the guy that is doing it.