A mystery that spans nearly half a century has just been answered, the research team says.
The puzzle includes the image above, which is a fossil trail. One archaeological fossil indicates animal activity rather than the animal itself, and this type of fossil provides invaluable information for researchers who want to understand the evolution of complex life on Earth. A quartzite rock was found on Mount Barren in southwest Australia, and the imprints embedded in it appear to have been made by crustaceans burrowing into the sand.
The only problem isQuartzite is as hard as concrete and cannot be penetrated by digging animals. So the relic must be done while the sand is still loose. But sand was deposited 1.7 billion years ago – a billion years before the first animals appeared in the fossil record, and their transformation into quartzite occurred more than 1.2 billion years ago, much earlier than the oldest animal fossils, less than 0.6 billion years ago,Paleontologist Bruce Ronegar of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) said.
In the new study, the researchers suggest that animals make marks on the quartzite, but what happens is when weathering and flooding soften the rock, giving the burrowing animals a chance to leave a mark before the rock hardens again.
Berger Rasmussen, a geologist from the University of Western Australia, said:It turns out to be younger than the surrounding quartzite by more than a billion years. So the burrows could have been made by animals.“
Paleontologist Stefan Bengtsson of the Swedish Museum of Natural History added,Archaeological excavations in these “wrong” rocks have been a mystery for half a century. We are pleased to be able to demonstrate the geological processes that solve this puzzle.“
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