This image is controversial. To some, it is evidence of the 1st failed experiment of complex life, hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously accepted to have existed. To others, it is just two pyrite concretions, not representing ancient life forms. This is the story of the Francevillian Biota, which is purported to both be the oldest multicellular life to evolve and the oldest known eukaryote. It dates to 2.1 billion years ago. Thumbnail Photo Credit: This work "FrancevillianBiota5", is a derivative of Figure 3a (resized, cropped, removed "A" label, text overlay, overlaid with GeologyHub made graphics (the image border & the GeologyHub logo)) from a scientific paper by El Albani A, Bengtson S, Canfield DE, Riboulleau A, Rollion Bard C, Macchiarelli R, et al. (2014) The 2.1 Ga Old Francevillian Biota: Biogenicity, Taphonomy and Biodiversity. PLoS ONE 9(6): e99438. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0099438, CC BY 4.0. "FrancevillianBiota5" is used & licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Youtube.com/GeologyHub If you would like to support this channel, consider using one of the following links: (Patreon: http://patreon.com/geologyhub) (YouTube membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYeGh5VML5XPr5jYnzh3J6g/join) (Gemstone & Mineral Etsy store: http://prospectingarizona.etsy.com) (GeologyHub Merch Etsy store: http://geologyhub.etsy.com) Google Earth imagery used in this video: ©Google & Data Providers This video is protected under "fair use". If you see an image and/or video which is your own in this video, and/or think my discussion of a scientific paper (and/or discussion/mentioning of the data/information within a scientific paper) does not fall under the fair use doctrine, and wish for it to be censored or removed, contact me by email at [email protected] and I will make the necessary changes. Various licenses used in sections of this video (not the entire video, this video as a whole does not completely fall under one of these licenses) and/or in this video's thumbnail image (and this list does not include every license used in this video and/or thumbnail image): CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode Sources/Citations: [1] El Albani A, Bengtson S, Canfield DE, Riboulleau A, Rollion Bard C, Macchiarelli R, et al. (2014) The 2.1 Ga Old Francevillian Biota: Biogenicity, Taphonomy and Biodiversity. PLoS ONE 9(6): e99438. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0099438, CC BY 4.0. [2] Chen, G., Cheng, Q., Lyons, T.W. et al. Reconstructing Earth’s atmospheric oxygenation history using machine learning. Nat Commun 13, 5862 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33388-5, CC BY 4.0. [3] Frantz Ossa Ossa, Marie-Laure Pons, Andrey Bekker, Axel Hofmann, Simon W. Poulton, Morten B. Andersen, Andrea Agangi, Daniel Gregory, Christian Reinke, Bernd Steinhilber, Johanna Marin-Carbonne, Ronny Schoenberg, Zinc enrichment and isotopic fractionation in a marine habitat of the c. 2.1 Ga Francevillian Group: A signature of zinc utilization by eukaryotes?, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 611, 2023, 118147, ISSN 0012-821X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2023.118147. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X23001607), CC BY 4.0. [4] Albani, A., Bengtson, S., Canfield, D. et al. Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago. Nature 466, 100–104 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09166 0:00 Controversial Find 0:49 Francevillian Biota 2:53 Oxygen Levels 3:14 Implications for Alien Life