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Science 28 November 1980:
Vol. 210. no. 4473, pp. 1013 - 1015
DOI: 10.1126/science.210.4473.1013
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Articles

The Works of Living Social Insects as Pseudofossils and the Age of the Oldest Known Metazoa

PRESTON CLOUD 1, L. B. GUSTAFSON 2, and J. A. L. WATSON 3

1 Department of Geological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106
2 Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T. 2600
3 Division of Entomology, CSIRO, Canberra, A.C.T. 2601, Australia

Living organisms are known to create structures in ancient rocks that are indigenous but not primary and that have been mistaken for fossils. Examination of burrows recently reported as fossils from 109-year-old sedimentary rocks indicates that they are not the same age as the rocks but were probably made by termites working down after water. The burrows are partially filled with material from a modern lateritic surface from which they descend into steeply dipping, decomposed silt-stones of the Zambian Copperbelt. In fact, no authentic record of Metazoa that are demonstrably coeval with rocks older than 680 million years is known.

Submitted on March 28, 1980
Revised on August 21, 1980


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Comment--Advanced Early Jurassic Termite (Insecta: Isoptera) Nests: Evidence from the Clarens Formation in the Tuli Basin, Southern Africa (Bordy et al., 2004).
J. F. GENISE, E. S. BELLOSI, R. N. MELCHOR, and M. I. COSARINSKY (2005)
Palaios 20, 303-308
   Full Text »    PDF »
The Ediacarian Period and Syste: Metazoa Inherit the Earth.
P. Cloud, P. Cloud, and M. F. Glaessner (1982)
Science 217, 783-792
   Abstract »    PDF »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)