国产原创 Researchers Combine Paleontology and Fluid Physics to Uncover Ediacaran Nurseries
Knowing how life worked on Earth 550 million years ago can give perspective on how life could evolve on other planets. Geobiologist and Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences听Simon Darroch听and postdoctoral researcher听听are working to figure that out.听
鈥淎t the broadest scale, understanding how, when, and why complex life evolved on this planet gives us a sense for how likely it is that we鈥檒l find complex life elsewhere in the solar system, and what it may look like,鈥 Darroch said. 鈥淚 honestly can鈥檛 think of anything cooler to be working on.鈥听
Their research features strange, vase-like organisms (in the genus听Ernietta) that lived in the Ediacaran era鈥攁pproximately 635 million to 541 million years ago. These organisms lived in marine environments, where fluid dynamics drive the evolution of the organisms that inhabit them.听听