Centimetre-scale structures reported from 2.1 Ga Gabonese shales

Assembled from 18 blocks · 1 evidence · 7 related

1. Story
2. El Albani and colleagues described pyritised, centimetre-scale structures with lobed margins and radial internal fabric from 2.1 billion-year-old black shales of the Francevillian Basin in Gabon, and interpreted them as colonial organisms showing coordinated growth. If accepted, the claim moves macroscopic organisation back by more than a billion years and places it immediately after the oxygenation of the atmosphere. The interpretation remains disputed on two grounds: that the structures could be abiotic pyrite growths or sedimentary features, and that nothing comparable is known for roughly the next billion years, which is difficult to reconcile with a continuous lineage.
3. Knowledge
4. The evolution of multicellularity
5. Francevillian Basin, Gabon
6. Centimetre-scale structures reported from 2.1 Ga Gabonese shales
7. Connections
8. Francevillian Basin, Gabon
9. The evolution of multicellularity
10. The evolution of multicellularity
11. Centimetre-scale structures reported from 2.1 Ga Gabonese shales
12. Endosymbiosis and the eukaryotic cell
13. Bangiomorpha pubescens
14. Francevillian Basin, Gabon
15. Ediacara Hills, Flinders Ranges
16. Centimetre-scale structures reported from 2.1 Ga Gabonese shales
17. Evidence
18. Supports the description of the Francevillian structures and their interpretation as colonial organisms. The interpretation is disputed; no rebuttal is cited here. V55 verification basis: this session had no network access to any source — WebFetch was egress-blocked and the WebSearch budget was exhausted — so the cited work was not retrieved and its pagination was not re-checked. Volume and page range are quoted from standing knowledge and were not re-checked.