The Francevillian biota
Centimetre-wide shapes in Gabon may be the oldest multicellular life — or may not be life at all.
- When
- Known to
- ± 30 million years
- Era
- Paleoproterozoic, Proterozoic
Rocks in the Franceville basin preserve macroscopic structures up to 12 centimetres across, argued to be colonial multicellular organisms and possibly eukaryotes. Morphology, mineralogy and geochemistry have all been marshalled in support, and the biota appears immediately after the oxygen rise, which fits. Sceptics read the shapes as inorganic pyrite growths. If genuine, complex life appeared 1.5 billion years before the Ediacaran.