Science / Medicine : Polar Marine Fossils Found

Scientists have found an assemblage of tiny tropical marine fossils at least 700 million years old near the North Pole, a discovery that opens a new window on the evolution of life in Earth’s distant past.

The unusual find of one-celled and multicellular microorganisms--some of them algae freeze-framed in the act of budding from spores--comes from a time when arctic regions were a landscape of percolating lagoons and warm tropical breezes.

Harvard University biologist Andrew Knoll said the fossils, which date from the Precambrian geological period, “are well preserved marine deposits that show a wider range of diversity than what might have been expected for the period.”

“This gives us a better window on the time and also suggests that much of the evolution of morphological (structural) complexity, particularly in algae, may have occurred earlier than the fossil record had indicated before.”