Previously Unknown Complex Lifeforms Dominated Earth 1.6 Billion Years Ago

how wonderful person this is Anton and today we're going to discuss some of the new discoveries in regards to the evolution of Life on our planet and specifically a potential resolution to one of the major Mysteries when it comes to the evolution of complex life right here on planet Earth something that the scientists have recently discovered by examining ancient rocks from Australia and something that actually

did surprise the scientists in essence suggesting that approximately 1.8 billion years ago the biosphere of planet Earth was probably extremely different from anything we've ever imagined and potentially containing unusual creatures very likely apex predators part of the extinct family that probably represented our ancestors eventually evolving into something more complex over time but it's only now that the scientists even identified their existence and so let's discuss

this new paper that as always you can find in description below a little bit more and also discuss this unusual lost world as the scientist from this paper refer to it and what exactly all this means for our understanding of evolution of Life on planet Earth or I guess more widely for the evolution of Life everywhere out there in the rest of the universe but first

the exactly what questions are the scientists behind the study trying to answer well the mystery here is actually in regards to the unusual period on planet Earth that the scientists sometimes referred to as boring billion or basically this unusual period of literally 1 billion years where things just didn't really go anywhere it appears like nothing evolved it appears that nothing really changed it also appears like

the planet was not really active tectonically there were no major climatic changes or even major evolutionary advances and for the most part at least according to observations from various fossils the life itself did not really change much either it's as if everything was frozen in time with the oceans probably populated by virus and oxygenic cyanobacteria that normally use hydrogen sulfide to produce all of their energy

and obviously quite a lot of bacteria was present as well with certain waveforms primitive life forms even making their way to the surface of the planet and establishing themselves on land for example there is some evidence for the existence of very primitive lichen which is normally a type of a cyanobacteria that might have been already active on the land and in the oceans but all of

the evidence from fossils has always suggested that this was mostly primitive life and basically life that's prokaryotic or bacterial in nature but one of the major questions that the scientists have always had is that why is it that for that one billion years none of our ancestors very capable eukaryotes become the dominant species on the planet did they just not exist yet appeared much much later

or is there some other reason for why the scientists are not seeing any evidence for anything eukaryotic in any of these ancient fossils okay quick clarification in biology generally the scientists divide life into either prokaryotic or eukaryotic prokaryotes are extremely simple usually just containing one cell and various Essential Elements needed for reproduction basically floating around inside the cytoplasm not really separated in any way so this

is your typical bacterium or I guess the most successful type of life on the planet for example we know that there are more of these inside your belly right now than there are actual cells in your body but then sometime later very likely billions of years later the life evolved into eukaryotes possibly also starting with a single cell but this time evolving various structures inside the

cell including a structure protecting the nucleus and a lot of other structures referred to as organelles and also generally possessing a lot of other features that bacteria do not have eventually eukaryotes also learn to kind of coexist with everything else and started forming more complex communities eventually even acquiring things inside the cell to help them deal with various effects of planet Earth and even become multicellular

and so for example soundly cells somehow found a way to create a symbiotic relationship with an ancient bacteria that was able to provide this cell both with a lot of energy eventually this became known as mitochondria these unusual organelles are actually ancient bacteria that contain their own DNA and their own bacterial structures that are still present inside but every one of our cells has them other

cells acquired another unusual bacterium that was able to create various types of sugars or energy by using nothing but sunlight this was the beginning of chloroplasts and the ancestors of various plants but for these eukaryotic cells the modern fossil records start approximately 800 million years ago or in other words by looking into various fossils the scientists find signs of these ancient eukaryotes only present in rocks

that are younger than 800 million years or the Intriguing older samples show us signs of various allergy which could have been eukaryotic as well and so there are several Mysteries here that evolutionary biologists could not really solve right away first mystery is obviously when exactly did eukaryotic cells start and if they start at 800 million years ago why are we seeing potential signs of older cells

in some samples does that mean that eukaryotes were just not very successful in that one billion boring years and if so why not because they're very successful on modern day Earth and they were actually successful for the past 800 million years when the second question being what exactly happened 800 million years ago to suddenly increase the population of eukaryotes and to make them dominate the planet

the spirit is actually known as the tunian transformation not to be confused with antonian transformation which is when I cut my hair and suddenly all the videos have me with old hair and new hair and it refers to the period approximately 800 million years ago when we suddenly have the appearance of first potential proto-animals including a strange creature known as otavia antiqua believed to be some

kind of a sponge-like creature eukaryotic in nature very likely representing one of the first animals but that basically implies that eukaryotes appeared very suddenly 800 million years ago became multicellular almost right away and started to propagate across the planet within just a few million years evolutionary speaking that's actually a pretty big leap and so because of this most evolutionary biologists believe that the eukaryotes existed for

much much longer and very likely coexisted with bacteria during the boring billion but this is just a belief and there was really no proof for any of this I mean there was some proof from occasional fossils of various allergy which are believed to be eukaryotic but nothing major to defendants will tell us that eukaryotes were everywhere and that's until the scientists realized maybe we were actually

looking for the wrong thing maybe the data was always there and so here let's actually talk a little bit more about the technicality of how the scientists usually analyze these fossils to know who existed when so for example in order to establish that the eukaryotes became prominent 800 million years ago the scientists rely on something that can be discovered in a lot of ancient fossils we

know that all modern cells eukaryotic cells the ones inside our bodies rely on fat like structures known as steroids the most famous one being cholesterol to construct various cell membranes and to perform various functions inside the cells pretty much all eukaryotes have some kind of a sterol in them and so the scientists have always believed that sterols basically Define eukaryotes and can thus be used as

an identifier in a variety of various fossils so by finding these ancient molecules it becomes possible to determine if eukaryotes existed back in the days but when you go back in time in terms of fossils at some point you reach rocks that are maybe 900 million years old and suddenly the chemical signs for these fats completely disappear which to the sizes obviously imply that maybe eukaryotes

did not evolve just yet or if they did evolve maybe they were just too primitive or just not really good enough to compete with bacteria in any way but in that recent study the scientists made a different assumption they basically assume that well what if we're actually looking for the wrong molecule what if background is the ancient eukaryotes actually had a different molecule that possibly acted

in a very similar way or in other words what if sterols and cholesterol and similar molecules are actually just an evolutionary advantage that was created much later but prior to this something else was used by these ancient eukaryotes they don't really know exactly what to call them so they call them protosterols and you biomarker that can be used to maybe discover these ancient eukaryotes in previous

samples and obviously organic molecules that would eventually evolve into things like cholesterol That's essential for life today and to their Surprise by looking at ancient rocks that are approximately 1.6 billion years old they discovered traces of these protosterols that would be otherwise difficult to explain with the signs of these molecules suggesting the existence of what the site is now referred to as protosterol biota some kind

of an ancient primitive life that very likely served as the ancestor for modern you periodic life but that most likely was also one of the most dominant life forms on the entire planet at least that was assumed from the observations of both the chemical record and from our understanding of how eukaryotes usually dominate prokaryotes and obviously nobody knows exactly what this life would look like or

what unusual features it might possess the point here is that it was very likely dominating the planet in a similar way eukaryotes dominated today but instead of using sterile molecules they would rely on their ancestor the protosterols to create the cell and to conduct all the necessary functions on the inside but something happened 800 million years ago and suddenly some of these species evolved sterols and

suddenly the sterol based eukaryotes acquired some kind of an advantage making them the dominant species and making everything else that we likely use protosterols go extinct and so even though they existed throughout probably that one billion years of boring billion named more or less one extinct following the tonian transformation 800 million years ago it's obviously not entirely clear why this happened but it's probably because the

kind of an ice ball Earth resulting in the midi requirement exchange on planet Earth intriguing the previous one happened 1.8 billion years ago right before that boring billion so the actual billionaires that we've discussed previously that happened right between two major glaciation periods and four in the spirit that's when we see the explosion of life on the planet including a life that's really complex and a

life that has multiple cells and it didn't take very long for wife to suddenly evolve into something that looks like this this is the famous anomalacaris one of the major predators of its time that existed a couple of hundred million years afterwards and so it's definitely strange how life eukaryotic life especially did not really change much for about a billion years and then suddenly changed dramatically

and evolved into something unique within just a few hundred million years that's something we cannot answer yet but what we can now answer is that there definitely was another really complex life on the planet that might have dominated by an Earth for at least a billion years eventually going extinct because something better came around and because of the abundance of these unusual molecules present in the

samples from 1.6 billion years ago the Assumption here is that this life was prominent this was pretty much everywhere so this unusual life form was very likely the most dominant complex life on the entire planet for approximately 1 billion years which is a super important finding for astrobiology as well if we do you want to find something out there that potentially resembles something on planet Earth

we have to take this into consideration we have to realize that sometime in the past even our complex cells use different machinery and different molecules to most likely produce similar results and if this kind of change was possible on planet Earth it's possible for even more extreme molecules to exist on other planets out there assuming life exists outside of planet Earth but we'll talk more about

these ideas in some of the future videos until then thank you for watching subscribe share this with someone who has learned about space and Sciences come back tomorrow to learn something else and maybe super decision on patreon by Joe and channel membership or mobile one for personal t-shirt you can find in the description stay wonderful I'll see you tomorrow and as always bye [Music] thank you

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