Till date, it was known to us that the oldest fossil was of red algae, which is 1.2 billion years old. But, recently on Tuesday scientists of India discovered a pair of 1.6 billion-year-old red algae, which may be the oldest plant-like fossil of the earth. Researchers on Tuesday have uncovered two types of red algae; one tiny, multicellular thread-like and another is bulbous, that lived in a shallow marine environment. The researchers said that the cellular structures preserved in the fossils and their shape match with the red algae, a primitive kind of plant that today thrives in marine and submarine settings such as coral. A common type of red algae nori is used in a Japanese recipe sushi ingredient as an ingredient.
The samples of the rock which contain the fossil come from an area where dozens of Hindu temples are there between the towns of Jankikund and Chitrakoot along the Valley of Son River in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The country rock and host rock consisted mostly of calcium and magnesium carbonates. But the red algae fossils and cyanobacteria were preserved in the foliation and layer of calcium phosphate, which shows finely detailed cellular structures explored with X-ray tomography. A senior Swedish scientist, Therese Sallstedt, in Department of Paleontology (DoP) at Swedish Museum of Natural History, came to India to examine the fossil.
She said that she didn’t expect to find this type of well-preserved fossilized Algae, which was much bigger and more complex than ever she has seen. “I am very excited to see this Indian fossil”. “Importantly we can conclude that the red algae are part of the layered mats which per definition makes them the same age as that of the host rocks”. She also added, “Phosphate can be considered as a magical substance for preserving fine-scale details, like intercellular features in fossils”. The scientist also said, “This sedimentary layered phosphate deposits containing the fossil can, therefore, open up a new window of other time periods since the preservation condition is extremely good.”
All the scientists of Paleontology and paleozoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who have examined the fossil, concluded that this discovery can lead experts to rewrite the whole story and tree of life. It is a negative point that they didn’t find any DNA remains in the fossils to be analyzed. But it has been proved that the material structurally preserved and embedded in fossil mats of cyanobacteria, inside a 1.6 billion-year-old Indian phosphorite.
Mr. said, Bengston “We cannot be a 100 percent sure about material this ancient, as there is no DNA remaining in the fossil, but the characters and structures agree with the morphology and structure of the red algae”. The study also said that the advanced engineering tools, like X-ray tomographic microscopy, allowed scientists to observe regularly recurring platelets in each cell of the fossil plant, which they believe are parts of chloroplasts, a plant organ cell.
