A study published in BMCBiology describes an exceptionally preserved 541-million-year-old algae fossil that provides new insight into the early diversification of the plant kingdom.
In recent years, Precambrian lifeforms have generated an ever-increasing interest because they revealed a rich eukaryotic diversity prior to the Cambrian explosion of modern animals. Among them, macroalgae are known to be a conspicuous component of Neoproterozoic ecosystems, and chlorophytes in particular are already documented in the Tonian, when they were so far expected to originate.
Here, we present an exceptionally preserved spherical, coenocytic unicellular alga from the latest Ediacaran Dengying Formation of South China , known from both external and internal morphology, fully tridimensional and in great detail.
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