Fossil Found in Canadian Mountains May Be Earliest Evidence of Animal Life 

A scientist says fossils she collected from an ancient seabed in the mountains of northwestern Canada may be the earliest evidence of animal life on Earth ever discovered. 

In a study published Wednesday in the science journal Nature, Laurentian University geologist Elizabeth Turner detailed how she found fossilized three-dimensional structures that resemble modern sponge skeletons in thin sections of rocks taken from the remnants of a prehistoric ocean reef. Turner said the surrounding rock was 890 million years old, which would make the fossils she discovered about 350 million years older than the oldest undisputed sponge fossils previously found. Many scientists believe Earth’s first animal groups included simple, soft sponges or sponge-like creatures that lack muscles and nerves but have other features of simple animals, including cells with differentiated functions. But scientists often disagree on specifically what the earliest animal life might have looked like.