Other posts of the series here:
1 - Evidence for a limit to human lifespan
2 - The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research
3 - Hubris Syndrome: How Power Corrupts
4 - The Thucydides Trap: The Next Clash of Civilizations
Hey there!
To be clear, there was not found a car engine inside an Egyptian Pyramid!
The discovery that I will describe, made in 2010, is comparable to that which would represent the discovery of a car engine in the heart of an Egyptian Pyramid if we wanted to make a comparison with human history.
I know that stating that finding large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 billion years ago does not sound very appealing to us all, but I explain.
Earth has formed 4.6 billion years ago, but in the first few hundred million years it was just a molten ball. The first living beings, very simple unicellular beings like bacteria, appeared "very fast", 3.8 billion years ago.
But, apart from simple unicellular beings, like bacteria, called prokaryotes, nothing new had been found in the rocks corresponding to the next 2.2 billion years. 1.6 billion years ago appear eukaryotes, always unicellular beings, but this time, more complex, provided with a nucleus.
Now imagine the repercussions of the controversial discovery of Abderrazak El Albani which shows that multicellular beings, composed of cells with nuclei, of a macroscopic size, existed already 2.1 billion years, that is to say, 1.5 billion years before the first known multicellular organisms, and even 500 million years before the first unicellular organisms with known nucleus!
El Albani reports the discovery of centimetre-sized structures from the 2.1 billion-year-old black shales formation in Gabon, which he interprets as highly organized and spatially discrete populations of colonial organisms.
In situ macrofossil specimen
For El Albani and his team, it was not easy to fight against preconceived ideas because scientists are sometimes too formatted by books. Of course, everyone needs knowledge, but we also need curiosity.
It took 2 years of verification so that the article announcing this remarkable discovery was published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. It took perseverance and above all, open-mindedness.
The fossils just were there, waiting to be known.
References:
El Albani, A., Bengtson, S., Canfield, D. E., Bekker, A., Macchiarelli, R., Mazurier, A., ... Meunier, A. (2010). Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago. Nature, 466(7302), 100-104.
1st Image: adapted from huffingtonpost.com
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Legman