Oldest Animal Fossils Found in Australia

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, May 10, 2002

Oldest Animal Fossils Found in Australia

Oldest animal-like organisms have been found in fossils, Australian paleontologists claimed. The fossil evidence was found by an Australian-Swedish researchteam in Western Australia's Stirling Ranges, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported Friday.

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Oldest animal-like organisms have been found in fossils, Australian paleontologists claimed.

They claimed that the organisms are more than twice the age of the oldest animal fossils acknowledged by paleontologists.

The fossil evidence was found by an Australian-Swedish researchteam in Western Australia's Stirling Ranges, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported Friday.

Birger Rasmussen, a paleontologist from the Geology and Geophysics Department of the University of Western Australia, found these organisms existed between 1200 and 2000 million years ago by dating the youngest minerals in the original sand and the minerals formed when the sandstone hardened to quartzite, according to AAP.

But, the report quoted him as saying that these traces did not yet resolve the controversial issue of when the first animals appeared on Earth.

"Traces may tell us a lot about the behavior of an organism, but they say little about what it looked like," Rasmussen said.

The paleontologists have not yet know what animals the organisms belonged to. Rasmussen guessed it was made by molluscs, corals, and various sorts of worms. But he added "It is more likely that they were made by extinct multicellular organisms thatmay, or may not, be closely related to animals."

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