New Idea on evolution

updated 4:23 p.m. ET, Thurs., Nov. 20, 2008
Slowly rolling across the ocean floor, a humble single-celled creature is poised to revolutionize our understanding of how complex life evolved on Earth.

A distant relative of microscopic amoebas, the grape-sized Gromia sphaerica was discovered once before, lying motionless at the bottom of the Arabian Sea. But when Mikhail Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and a group of researchers stumbled across a group of G. sphaerica off the coast of the Bahamas, the creatures were leaving trails behind them up to 20 inches long in the mud.

The trouble is, single-celled critters aren't supposed to be able to leave trails. The oldest fossils of animal trails, called 'trace fossils', date to around 580 million years ago, and paleontologists always figured they must have been made by multicellular animals with complex, symmetrical bodies.

But G. sphaerica's traces are the spitting image of the old, Precambrian fossils; two small ridges line the outside of the trail, and one thin bump runs down the middle.

At up to 1.2 inches in diameter, they're also enormous compared to most of their microscopic cousins.

"If these guys were alive 600 million years ago, and their traces got fossilized, a paleontologist who had never seen this thing would not have a shade of doubt attributing this kind of trace to the activity of a big, multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animal," Matz said.

"This is a very important discovery," Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Polytechnic Institute said. "The fact that protists can make traces has important implications for how we interpret many trace fossils."

The finding could overturn conventional thinking on a mysterious time in the evolution of early life known as the Cambrian Explosion. Until about 550 million years ago, there were very few animals leaving trails behind. Then, within 10 million years an unprecedented blossoming of life swarmed across the planet, filling every niche with hard-bodied, complex creatures.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27827279/

Trainwreck on the theory? [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

People can believe what they want but i personally think Evolution is a big load of crap

I don't see why you couldn't believe in evolution and the bible's theory on what happened.

It probably wouldn't be a "trainwreck" on the theory, but really an adjustment on it. It would probably change the way they look at the very first organisms that went from the ocean onto the earth's surface. For instance, it wouldn't be your typical "walking fish" that you were taught about in school, but more of a smaller/simpler organism that did more evolving out of the ocean than one assumed.

And--let me be clear before I ask this--I am NOT flaming/messing with Milk...honest question...

Why do you think that evolution is crap? Care to explain your stance on it?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Milk3</div><div class="ubbcode-body">People can believe what they want but i personally think Evolution is a big load of crap </div></div>

The finding could overturn conventional thinking on a mysterious time in the evolution of early life known as the Cambrian Explosion. Until about 550 million years ago, there were very few animals leaving trails behind. Then, within 10 million years an unprecedented blossoming of life swarmed across the planet, filling every niche with hard-bodied, complex creatures.

"It wasn't a gradual development of complexity," Matz said. "Instead these things suddenly seemed to burst out of a magic box."

Charles Darwin first noticed the Cambrian Explosion and thought it was an artifact of a poorly preserved fossil record. The precambrian trace fossils were left by multicellular animals, he reasoned, so there must be some gap in fossils between the nearly empty Precambrian and the teeming world that quickly followed. But if the first traces were instead made by G. sphaerica, it would mean the Explosion was real; it must have been a diversification of life on a scale never

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: duckmeat</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I don't see why you couldn't believe in evolution and the bible's theory on what happened. </div></div>
I just don't personally believe in evolution i'm not knocking on anybody that does because i can see why people could believe in either idea

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Milk3</div><div class="ubbcode-body">People can believe what they want but i personally think Evolution is a big load of crap </div></div>

I think of evolution as a theory only, not fact, and am open to positive proof that it is the way we have progressed through the ages. However, I personally believe in the "Big Bang Theory". God said it, and "bang!", it happened! [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Milk3</div><div class="ubbcode-body">People can believe what they want but i personally think Evolution is a big load of crap</div></div>
why?

what makes you say that?

while i dont have a feeling on it one way or the other i cant completely dismiss it because weve seen forms of evolution in our lifetime

i also believe in the "big bang theory" as the basis for the cereation of the planet.....i also think that pangea was real also......when you look at a globe........i just dont think its coincidental that all the continents are shaped like puzzle pieces

i think they are all related

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlueWahooChambor</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Milk3</div><div class="ubbcode-body">People can believe what they want but i personally think Evolution is a big load of crap</div></div>
why?

what makes you say that?

while i dont have a feeling on it one way or the other i cant completely dismiss it because weve seen forms of evolution in our lifetime

i also believe in the "big bang theory" when you look at a globe........i just dont think its coincidental that all the continents are shaped like puzzle pieces



</div></div>
Never said god made the earth exactly how it is now just that he made it. I also believe that pangea (sp) existed millions of years go and that plate tectonics caused it to break up and that continental drift caused the continents to be were they are now. As for evolution in animals now i don't think so.There's a difference in something adapting and something evolving

you still never said why evolution is a bunch of crap