Scientists have spotted in rocks from northern China what might be the oldest fossils of a green plant ever found, tiny seaweed that carpeted areas of the seafloor about 1 billion years ago and were part of a primordial revolution among life on Earth.
Researchers on Monday said that the plant, called Proterocladus antiquus, was about the size of a rice grain and boasted numerous thin branches, thriving in shallow water while attached to the seafloor with a root-like structure.
It might seem small, but Proterocladus — a form of green algae — was one of the largest organisms of its time, sharing the seas mainly with bacteria and other microbes. It engaged in photosynthesis, transforming energy from sunlight into chemical energy and producing oxygen.
“Proterocladus antiquus is a close relative of the ancestor of all green plants alive today,” said Tang Qing (唐卿), a Virginia Tech post-doctoral researcher who detected the fossils in rock dug up in Liaoning Province and lead author of the article in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The first land plants, thought to be descendants of green seaweeds, appeared about 450 million years ago.
There was an evolutionary shift on Earth about 2 billion years ago from simple bacteria-like cells to the first members of a group called eukaryotes that spans fungi, plants and animals. The first plants were single-celled organisms.
The transition to multicellular plants such as Proterocladus was a pivotal development that paved the way for the riot of plants that have inhabited the world, from ferns to sequoias to the Venus flytrap.
Proterocladus is 200 million years older than the previous earliest-known green seaweed. It represents the oldest unambiguous green plant fossil.
Plants were not the first to practice photosynthesis. They had an ancestor that apparently acquired the photosynthesis cellular apparatus from a type of bacteria called cyanobacteria.
This ancestor of all green plants gave rise to two major branches; one of them includes some aquatic plants and all land plants, while the other — the group to which Proterocladus belongs — is made up exclusively of aquatic plants.
“Proterocladus antiquus is the sister of the evolutionary great, great grandmother of all green plants alive today,” Virginia Tech paleobiologist and study coauthor Xiao Shuhai (肖書海) said.
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