Exquisitely preserved fossil deposit a window on early life on land | Susannah Lydon
by Susannah Lydon from on (#2FYGF)
The Rhynie Chert fossil deposit in Scotland is just over 400 million years old and reveals secrets of life's conquest of the land
How life made the move onto land is one of the big questions for palaeobiologists. The physiological challenges were immense, and affected most facets of life. Organisms needed to adapt how they gained water (and prevented themselves drying out), how to obtain nutrients, how to exchange gases with the atmosphere, how to support and move a body without water buoyancy, not to mention reproducing out of water.
Related: Scotland holds the key to understanding how life first walked on land
Continue reading...