Science doing what it does best; advancing.

[Tank]

Chinese Fossils Shed Light On Evolutionary Origin of Animals from Single-Cell Ancestors

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2011) — Evidence of the single-celled ancestors of animals, dating from the interval in Earth's history just before multicellular animals appeared, has been discovered in 570 million-year-old rocks from South China by researchers from the University of Bristol, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the Paul Scherrer Institut and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences...

...Professor Philip Donoghue said: "We were very surprised by our results -- we've been convinced for so long that these fossils represented the embryos of the earliest animals -- much of what has been written about the fossils for the last ten years is flat wrong. Our colleagues are not going to like the result." {you can almost hear the snigger can't you?}

Professor Stefan Bengtson said: "These fossils force us to rethink our ideas of how animals learned to make large bodies out of cells."...

There is very little one scientist likes more than to prove his colleagues wrong and thus advance understanding  

[Pharaoh Cat]

The fossils, reported this week in Science, preserve stages in the life cycle of an amoeba-like organism dividing in asexual cycles, first to produce two cells, then four, eight, 16, 32 and so on, ultimately resulting in hundreds of thousands of spore-like cells that were then released to start the cycle over again. The pattern of cell division is so similar to the early stages of animal (including human) embryology that until now they were thought to represent the embryos of the earliest animals.

Wow!  All it takes to make those spores an embryo is getting them to stick together!  Cool as all hell.

The organisms should not have been fossilized -- they were just gooey clusters of cells -- but they were buried in sediments rich in phosphate that impregnated the cell walls and turned them to stone.

Think of how precious such a find is.

Co-author Dr John Cunningham said: "We used a particle accelerator called a synchrotron as our X-ray source. It allowed us to make a perfect computer model of the fossil that we could cut up in any way that we wanted, but without damaging the fossil in any way. We would never have been able to study the fossils otherwise!"

Wow!  Coolness.

[pytheas]

in a more strict field of biology a great case for rewriting text books  was the gastrointestinal absorption of protein prion disease.
some old guys working their life way in a theory that is shown with ever so slightly faulty premises..timed for a retirement bonus
you call showbiz vain?