Each experiment started with a template – an information structure consisting of two types of central nucleotide sequences. The researchers demonstrated that under periodically changing conditions, a template binary structure can be copied repeatedly. Such a replication mechanism could have taken place in a hydrothermal microsystem on early Earth.
In particular, according to the authors, a favorable environment for such reaction cycles could have developed in porous rocks on the seabed, where natural temperature fluctuations are associated with convection currents.
Paleontologists have discovered sponge-like fossils in ancient reefs that are 890 million years old. If the results are confirmed, it will be the oldest find of multicellular living organisms on Earth.
It is believed that the first multicellular organisms, which can be confidently attributed to animals, appeared on Earth about 635 million years ago, in Ediacaria – the last geological period of the Proterozoic. We are talking about vendobionts – mysterious radially and bilaterally symmetrical organisms that led a sedentary or sedentary lifestyle.
However, some scientists believe that the first animals on Earth were sponges – marine multicellular attached to the bottom, which are still widely distributed around the world.
Well—preserved ancient fossil sponges have been known since the Cambrian period, which began 541 million years ago, but phylogenetic analysis and biomarkers indicate that sponges existed much earlier, and in sedimentary rocks aged 750 million years, scientists found silicon spicules – elements of the mineralized skeleton of sponges.
Canadian paleontologist Elizabeth Turner from Laurentian University has discovered fossils extremely similar in structure to sponges in ancient reefs in northwestern Canada. The reefs belong to bacterial structures, are composed of calcium carbonate and are 890 million years old.
In the rock samples, Turner identified branched networks of tubular structures mineralized with calcite – crystalline calcium carbonate. The researcher noted that these structures closely resemble the fibrous skeleton of horny sponges, which are currently used for the production of sponges for washing.
The author believes that these structures may be the fossilized remains of horn sponges that lived on carbonate reefs for another 90 million years before the oxygen level on Earth rose to concentrations that are considered necessary to maintain animal life.