Category Archives: Proterozoic

How do we know Gabon’s ‘multicellular’ fossils are 2.1 billion years old?

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Chris Rowan

The fossil record prior to 550 million years ago is so patchy that every discovery is going to cause some fanfare. That is certainly case with these odd looking things, which have been proclaimed in Nature as the oldest mulitcellular … Continue reading →

Categories: fossils, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, Proterozoic

Oman’s view of the Snowball Earth

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Chris Rowan

Evidence from my field area of extreme climatic fluctuations 700 million years ago – but does it support the notion that the whole planet froze over?
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Categories: climate science, deep time, fieldwork, geology, outcrops, palaeomagic, past worlds, Proterozoic

Neoproterozoic signs of life

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Chris Rowan

Whilst the the dawn of the Cambrian clearly marked the diversification of mobile, active animals and biomineralisers, the story of their first origins appear to have begun much earlier.
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Categories: fossils, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, Proterozoic