ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2008)— Groove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals, says biologist Mikhail “Misha” Matz from The University of Texas at Austin. “If our giant protists were alive 600 million years ago and the track was fossilized, a paleontologist unearthing it today would without a shade of doubt attribute it to a kind of large, multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animal,” says Matz, an assistant professor of integrative biology. “We now have to rethink the fossil record.”
However, Professor Joe Meert Florida Citizens for Science Vice President is not so convinced. Here is his response.
I would not be surprised if some of the Precambrian tracks were indeed made by similar single-celled organisms, but I hesitate to ascribe ‘all precambrian tracks’ to such creatures. Some are weird sedimentary artifacts and others are difficult to attribute to protists like these. We don’t have access to this journal at UF so I can’t look at the traces. The more convincing Precambrian traces I’ve seen tend to be quite deeply furrowed and unlikely to result from simpler protists. So my bias is that multicellularity has deep roots in the Precambrian albeit with a low diversity.
Valid disagreement within the realms of scientific research is the driving force of progress and stimulates the continuing search for knowledge.