Billion-Year-Old Green Algae Found in China Is The Oldest Ever Discovered

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The oldest green seaweed on record, the ancestor of all land plants, lived about 1 billion years ago, a new study finds. 

 Scientists have discovered the fossils of what may be the oldest green algae ever known. The newfound seaweed — called Proterocladus antiquus — lived about a billion years ago. And even though it was tiny, about 0.07 inches (2 millimeters) in length, the algae had a big role: It could produce oxygen through photosynthesis.

"Its discovery indicates that green plants we see today can be traced back to at least 1 billion years ago, and they started in the ocean before they expanded their territory to the land," study lead researcher Qing Tang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, told Live Science in an email.

Just like modern-day algae, P. antiquus has differentiated, branched cells and root-like structures, Tang said. It likely played an important role in the ancient ecosystem by producing oxygen, he said. In addition, it likely provided food and shelter to other organisms.  However, they caution that the fragmentary nature of the remains could mean a previously identified species of Proterocladus (such as P. minor, found in Svalbard, Norway)  has been mistaken for an entirely new species.

"Most of the organisms (particularly cyanobacteria) in this period were either planktonic or lying on the seafloor," Tang said. P. antiquus also grew on the seafloor, indicating that it could have served as an ideal place for living, hiding, resting for other organisms, he said.

The hope is that the dating of the newly discovered P. antiquus will enable scientists to narrow down the window by creating a minimum age for the split between Rhodophyta (red algae) and Viridiplantae and the evolution of multicellularity in Chlorophyta, among other things.

Land plants did not start to appear until the Silurian Period, 430 million years ago, after a mass extinction took out a large proportion of marine life. Flowers did not evolve until much later—120 million years ago.

Sources: https://www.newsweek.com/billion-year-old-green-algae-china-oldest-1488794

https://www.livescience.com/oldest-green-algae-discovered.html

 

[TSUNAMI 21,297]

But did it stream Stupid Love???

 

OT: I love these discoveries. Did they already found any evidence of purple plants? 

[LadyxGaGa 3,227]

Wait is this older than what they found in Lake Vostok? 

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1 minute ago, LadyxGaGa said:

Wait is this older than what they found in Lake Vostok? 

This is the oldest green algae ever found but there are red and brown algea which are older, I don't what kind of algae is the one found in Lake Vostok though.

 

8 minutes ago, JFK said:

But did it stream Stupid Love???

 

OT: I love these discoveries. Did they already found any evidence of purple plants? 

Stupid Love is pink, not purple.

[Illuminati 15,966]

Old enough to be Gaga's next collaborator

[Vitleysingur 13,790]

Did they find Algee Six there too?

[ADVENTURE 856]

China needs to apologize for their old algae! 

 

OT: aaawwesome!

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2 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

This is the oldest green algae ever found but there are red and brown algea which are older, I don't what kind of algae is the one found in Lake Vostok though.

 

Stupid Love is pink, not purple.

First plants were purple since there was no sunlight to make photosytesis happen