Fossil links humans and monkeys

Researchers have discovered the skull of a 29 million-year-old animal that could be a common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes, including humans.

It indicates that apes and Old World monkeys diverged millions of years later than previously thought, say the scientists.

The discovery was made in Saudi Arabia by researchers from the University of Michigan.

They described the primate, Saadanius hijazensis, in the journal Nature.

Dr William Sanders from the University of Michigan, who led the research, said this was "an extraordinary find".

The skull of this previously unknown species had some features that are shared by Old World monkeys and apes, including humans, today.

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Multicellular fossils may be world's oldest

Fossils found in Gabon suggest complex organisms lived as far back as 2.1 billion years ago, paleontologists say.

An international team of paleontologists has uncovered the earliest known multicellular fossils, pushing back the fossil record for such life forms to 2.1 billion years ago and suggesting that they lived 200 million years earlier than scientists had thought.

Since most fossils in that period were microscopic and single-celled, finding fossils that stretched as long as 4.75 inches was "like ordering an hors d'oeuvre and some gigantic thick-crust pizza turning up," said Philip Donoghue, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol, who co-wrote a commentary on the finding. The report detailing the fossils, along with the commentary, was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The organisms, which don't resemble modern-day living things, existed when Earth's atmosphere would have been uninhabitable for today's plants and animals.

Their fossils provide "the first record of that fundamental threshold in organismal complexity being surpassed," Donoghue said. "To put it into context, the godfather of evolutionary biology, John Maynard Smith, identified eight major events in evolutionary history; achieving multicellularity was one of these."

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Fossil find resolves ancient extinction mystery

Researchers have revealed remarkably well preserved fossils of soft-bodied marine creatures that are between 470 and 480 million years old.

Prior to this find, scientists were unsure whether such creatures died out in an extinction event during an earlier period known as the Cambrian.

The fossils were preserved in rocks formed by layers of ancient marine mud in south-eastern Morocco.

They are described in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

The research team that studied the fossils described them as marine animals that lived during the early part of a period that followed the Cambrian, known as the Ordovician.

Professor Derek Briggs from Yale University in New Haven, US, who was an author of the study, told BBC News that the discovery provided "a much more complete record of early marine life than we've every had before".

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Fossil reveals early bird plumage

A new study of a 150-million-year-old fossil of an Archaeopteryx has shown that remnants of its feathers have been preserved.

Archaeopteryx is regarded as a "missing link" that documents a fabulous transition from dinosaur to bird.

The researchers say that it may soon be possible to work out the colours of feathers sported by these creatures.

Archaeopteryx is the most iconic of fossils: Many of the specimens beautifully capture this snapshot of evolution - showing the creature's skeleton, feathers and teeth in great detail.

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