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Technology of Craftsmanship
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Anonymous Coward |
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[ link to www.livescience.com (secure)] The Nevada fossils offered a chance to answer this question. Unlike in other locations around the world, the cloudinomorph fossils from Nevada are still hollow. After the cloudinomorphs died, their soft tissues were typically preserved by pyritization, a process that creates a shiny pyrite (fool's gold) cast of the living creature. For whatever geochemical reason, the pyrite did not completely fill the tubes of the Nevada cloudinomorphs, allowing researchers to see the soft tissues inside.
They date to between 550 million and 539 million years ago. This was the end of the Ediacaran, the period in which the earliest multicellular complex life arose. Life at that time was bizarre and hard to classify by modern standards; most fossils of these organisms look like fronds, tubes or vaguely round bags.
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