Beijing: North Korean researchers have
discovered a 620,000,000-year-old fossil of a tubular animal,
the first organism with skeletal structure on Earth, the state
media reported today.
Researchers from the geology faculty of Kim Il Sung
University excavated the fossil of the tubular animal in the
Proterozoic era of North Hwanghae province, the Korean Central
News Agency (KCNA) said in a report.
According to the report, the tubular animal was the first
organism with skeletal structure on Earth. It was an elliptic
tube-shape animal with nothing in abdomen.
The researchers said they found fossils of primitive
seaweeds and primitive jellyfish belonging to the period of
transition from one-cell to multi-cell in 2001.
During their recent in-depth research into the fossil,
they discovered the fossil of the 5 cm-long tubular animal
again on the same stratum, Xinhua news agency quoted KCNA as
saying.
The excavation of the fossil helps towards solving the
crustal formation in a scientific way and concretising the
evolution process of organism, the report said.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 12:23