The 600-Million-Year-Old “Smoking Gun”: MIT Just Proved We All Started as… Sponges?
Forget dinosaurs. Forget the megalodon. The biggest mystery in the history of life on Earth has finally been solved by a team of molecular detectives at MIT, and the answer was hiding inside a rock for half a billion years.
The Mystery: Who Came First? For decades, scientists have argued over a simple question: What was the very first animal? Did complex life begin with an explosion of creatures in the Cambrian period, or was something lurking in the oceans long before that? We had no bones, no shells, and no footprints. The trail was cold.
The Clue: A “Chemical Ghost” Since soft creatures (like sponges) don’t leave skeletons, MIT researchers stopped looking for bones and started looking for grease. Specifically, fossilized fat molecules called sterols.
They analyzed ancient rocks from Oman and found a specific molecule—a “chemical fossil”—that looked suspiciously like it belonged to a living creature. But for years, skeptics argued: “That’s not an animal. That’s just ancient algae or a geological accident.”
The Breakthrough: The Genetic Time Machine MIT didn’t back down. They went into the DNA of modern organisms and tracked the gene history of the Demosponge (a common sea sponge).
The Findings: They discovered that these sponges possess the exact gene machinery required to produce the rare “C31” molecule found in the ancient rocks.
The Result: It’s a perfect match. The molecule in the rock is a chemical signature that only this sponge could leave behind.
The “Mic Drop” Moment This discovery is the “smoking gun.” It proves that sponges were thriving in the deep oceans 600 million years ago—long before the famous “Cambrian Explosion” of life.
The Takeaway: The next time you use a natural sponge in the bath, show some respect. You are looking at the ultimate survivor—the Adam and Eve of the animal kingdom that started the journey of life on Earth.
Source: SciTechDaily
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The 600-Million-Year-Old “Smoking Gun”: MIT Just Proved We All Started as… Sponges?