810 Million-Year-Old Microfossils Are Ancient Example of Mineralized Tissue (3 of 8) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

810 Million-Year-Old Microfossils Are Ancient Example of Mineralized Tissue (3 of 8)

Caption

Scanning electron microscope image of a biomineralized ASM fossil from Mount Slipper. Fossils are found by dissolving carbonate rocks from Mount Slipper in weak acid. These structures likely acted as armor, with many plates of the same type surrounding a single cell. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the June 28, 2017, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by P.A. Cohen at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, and colleagues was titled, 'Controlled hydroxyapatite biomineralization in an ~810 million-year-old unicellular eukaryote.'

Credit

[Credit: Phoebe A. Cohen]

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