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Biogeochemistry

Food for early animal evolution

Nature volume 548, pages 528–530 (2017)Cite this article

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A revised timeline for when algae became ecologically important among plankton in the ancient oceans reveals a link between chemical changes in those waters and the emergence of animals in marine ecosystems. See Letter p.578

Ever since microorganisms first emerged, Earth and the life upon it have engaged in something of a pas de deux. Seldom during this long history have the dance's tempo and the dramatic heights of the jeté leaps exceeded those that occurred near the end of the Proterozoic eon, which spanned the time from 2.5 billion to 541 million years ago. A supercontinent broke apart and then began to reassemble; ice ages twice whitened the planet from pole to Equator; and redox conditions underwent a fundamental shift. Amid all of this, animals large enough to be visible to the eye arrived on the scene, among them the bilaterians, which are symmetrical along their front-to-back axis, have complex organs and overwhelmingly represent present-day animal diversity.

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Figure 1: The rise of algae.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Andrew H. Knoll

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  1. Andrew H. Knoll
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Correspondence to Andrew H. Knoll.

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Knoll, A. Food for early animal evolution. Nature 548, 528–530 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23539

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