When did single cell organisms become multicellular organisms?

[rdean]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

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Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

 

[American Horse]

Yes, and then it took so very long for that first advavcement to complex multicellular life.

 

[sealybobo]

Yes, and then it took so very long for that first advavcement to complex multicellular life.

Imagine how long it takes for that life to split into all of the fish amphibians reptiles mammals and birds we have today.

This is what happens when stars explode and spill their enriched guts out into the universe. You, me, fish, the moon comets meteors planets all come from the inside of stars.

 

[IsaacNewton]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

-----------------

Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

 

[sealybobo]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

-----------------

Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

100 years we get. 1000. 10,000. We don't even realize what human history was 999,000 years ago. So 3 million years ago is hard to grasp or 900 million years ago. Now let's talk billions. We (the universe) are less than 14 billion years old old and they say we only have ten billion to go. We've been around for 1 billion roughly. How special are we it took us 12 billion years to arrive?

 

[IsaacNewton]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

-----------------

Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

100 years we get. 1000. 10,000. We don't even realize what human history was 999,000 years ago. So 3 million years ago is hard to grasp or 900 million years ago. Now let's talk billions. We (the universe) are less than 14 billion years old old and they say we only have ten billion to go. We've been around for 1 billion roughly. How special are we it took us 12 billion years to arrive?

The current rough timeline for modern humans is we arose about 200,000 +/- years ago, with various other forms before that. Then for the next 190,000 years we just gathered and hunted to survive and not much more. Imagine that length of time. And for the last 10,000 years we have oh so slowly gained knowledge of how to manipulate the environment. We still used horses for transportation up until about 110 years ago.

The estimate of the age of the universe is 13.72 billion years and humans have been around for 0.000014 of that time period. The lengths of time are incredible.

 

[sealybobo]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

-----------------

Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

100 years we get. 1000. 10,000. We don't even realize what human history was 999,000 years ago. So 3 million years ago is hard to grasp or 900 million years ago. Now let's talk billions. We (the universe) are less than 14 billion years old old and they say we only have ten billion to go. We've been around for 1 billion roughly. How special are we it took us 12 billion years to arrive?

The current rough timeline for modern humans is we arose about 200,000 +/- years ago, with various other forms before that. Then for the next 190,000 years we just gathered and hunted to survive and not much more. Imagine that length of time. And for the last 10,000 years we have oh so slowly gained knowledge of how to manipulate the environment. We still used horses for transportation up until about 110 years ago.

The estimate of the age of the universe is 13.72 billion years and humans have been around for 0.000014 of that time period. The lengths of time are incredible.

What about the trilobites that ruled the planet for millions of years before the dinosaurs? I can't believe we went through so many mass extinctions yet life continues to bloom. I wonder if there was another mass extinction would anything intelligent rise again? I've heard probably not that we were a fluke and if we disappeared monkeys wouldn't evolve into humans. Can you explain that?

 

[IsaacNewton]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

-----------------

Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

100 years we get. 1000. 10,000. We don't even realize what human history was 999,000 years ago. So 3 million years ago is hard to grasp or 900 million years ago. Now let's talk billions. We (the universe) are less than 14 billion years old old and they say we only have ten billion to go. We've been around for 1 billion roughly. How special are we it took us 12 billion years to arrive?

The current rough timeline for modern humans is we arose about 200,000 +/- years ago, with various other forms before that. Then for the next 190,000 years we just gathered and hunted to survive and not much more. Imagine that length of time. And for the last 10,000 years we have oh so slowly gained knowledge of how to manipulate the environment. We still used horses for transportation up until about 110 years ago.

The estimate of the age of the universe is 13.72 billion years and humans have been around for 0.000014 of that time period. The lengths of time are incredible.

What about the trilobites that ruled the planet for millions of years before the dinosaurs? I can't believe we went through so many mass extinctions yet life continues to bloom. I wonder if there was another mass extinction would anything intelligent rise again? I've heard probably not that we were a fluke and if we disappeared monkeys wouldn't evolve into humans. Can you explain that?

Yeah the trilobites thrived for more than 250 million years in the ocean. And then gone. Again the timelines are so beyond what we are used to it is hard to fathom. They arose during the Early Cambrian explosion (542 + million years ago) when lifeforms first radiated from simple forms to all the known complex forms we see today. And they survived until the largest mass extinction 252 million years ago, the Permian/Triassic extinction, that wiped out close to 95% of all species. It took 10-20 million years for life to recover from that.

Another incredible fact is the survival of shale from the Cambrian explosion in The Burgess Shale. A deposit in Canada more than 500 million years old that contains very detailed fossils of soft-bodied creatures that lived in the ocean. They are very well preserved in these fossils.

Burgess Shale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[IsaacNewton]

Reading through the study in the link they are actually reconstructing the proteins on a molecular level to see what mechanical, biological, and genetic changes allowed for multi-cellular organisms to arise and reproduce themselves.

They are looking for the changes on a molecular level. Incredible. Science is also working on when exactly this switch to multicelled organisms took place. Evidence points to 1.2 billion to about 700 million years ago. Then it took another maybe 150 million years for the genetic 'toolbox' to be in place for the Cambrian explosion around 550 million years ago when multicellular organisms formed almost all of the current 'types' in a relatively short period of time, maybe 20-30 million years.

 

[Old Rocks]

BioTechniques - How Animals Became Multicellular

By comparing proteins in choanoflagellates to those of the earliest animals, researchers are trying to understand when and how they evolved the functions necessary for multicellularity, such as cells being able to stick together, signaling between cells, and differentiation (9,10). The new study’s approach provides a foundation for finding out how the gene networks and gene interactions were repurposed in multicellular animals and how new gene functions evolved.

-----------------

Amazing there was life so soon after the planet was formed.

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

100 years we get. 1000. 10,000. We don't even realize what human history was 999,000 years ago. So 3 million years ago is hard to grasp or 900 million years ago. Now let's talk billions. We (the universe) are less than 14 billion years old old and they say we only have ten billion to go. We've been around for 1 billion roughly. How special are we it took us 12 billion years to arrive?

The current rough timeline for modern humans is we arose about 200,000 +/- years ago, with various other forms before that. Then for the next 190,000 years we just gathered and hunted to survive and not much more. Imagine that length of time. And for the last 10,000 years we have oh so slowly gained knowledge of how to manipulate the environment. We still used horses for transportation up until about 110 years ago.

The estimate of the age of the universe is 13.72 billion years and humans have been around for 0.000014 of that time period. The lengths of time are incredible.

What about the trilobites that ruled the planet for millions of years before the dinosaurs? I can't believe we went through so many mass extinctions yet life continues to bloom. I wonder if there was another mass extinction would anything intelligent rise again? I've heard probably not that we were a fluke and if we disappeared monkeys wouldn't evolve into humans. Can you explain that?

Yeah the trilobites thrived for more than 250 million years in the ocean. And then gone. Again the timelines are so beyond what we are used to it is hard to fathom. They arose during the Early Cambrian explosion (542 + million years ago) when lifeforms first radiated from simple forms to all the known complex forms we see today. And they survived until the largest mass extinction 252 million years ago, the Permian/Triassic extinction, that wiped out close to 95% of all species. It took 10-20 million years for life to recover from that.

Another incredible fact is the survival of shale from the Cambrian explosion in The Burgess Shale. A deposit in Canada more than 500 million years old that contains very detailed fossils of soft-bodied creatures that lived in the ocean. They are very well preserved in these fossils.

Burgess Shale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould.

Amazon.com: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (9780393307009): Stephen Jay Gould: Books

 

[IsaacNewton]

Well 'soon after' is relative of course, likely 500 million to 1 billion years after the Earth formed. You are right this is rather soon after the Earth formed in geologic time.

It then took another 2.5 billion years approximately for complex life to arise. One day at a time. Deep time is something the human mind has a tough time absorbing and is why so many people find it hard to believe in evolution. They cannot imagine the amount of time we are talking about.

The dinosaurs in their various forms roamed the Earth for about 160 million years. An unbelievably long time and countless millions of generations. Tyrannosaurus likely existed in its ultimate form for 5-10 million years. Imagine how many generations and individuals that would produce. Yet we've only found 35 or so partial fossilized remains.

The timeline of life on Earth has to be one of the most fascinating discoveries we've ever made.

100 years we get. 1000. 10,000. We don't even realize what human history was 999,000 years ago. So 3 million years ago is hard to grasp or 900 million years ago. Now let's talk billions. We (the universe) are less than 14 billion years old old and they say we only have ten billion to go. We've been around for 1 billion roughly. How special are we it took us 12 billion years to arrive?

The current rough timeline for modern humans is we arose about 200,000 +/- years ago, with various other forms before that. Then for the next 190,000 years we just gathered and hunted to survive and not much more. Imagine that length of time. And for the last 10,000 years we have oh so slowly gained knowledge of how to manipulate the environment. We still used horses for transportation up until about 110 years ago.

The estimate of the age of the universe is 13.72 billion years and humans have been around for 0.000014 of that time period. The lengths of time are incredible.

What about the trilobites that ruled the planet for millions of years before the dinosaurs? I can't believe we went through so many mass extinctions yet life continues to bloom. I wonder if there was another mass extinction would anything intelligent rise again? I've heard probably not that we were a fluke and if we disappeared monkeys wouldn't evolve into humans. Can you explain that?

Yeah the trilobites thrived for more than 250 million years in the ocean. And then gone. Again the timelines are so beyond what we are used to it is hard to fathom. They arose during the Early Cambrian explosion (542 + million years ago) when lifeforms first radiated from simple forms to all the known complex forms we see today. And they survived until the largest mass extinction 252 million years ago, the Permian/Triassic extinction, that wiped out close to 95% of all species. It took 10-20 million years for life to recover from that.

Another incredible fact is the survival of shale from the Cambrian explosion in The Burgess Shale. A deposit in Canada more than 500 million years old that contains very detailed fossils of soft-bodied creatures that lived in the ocean. They are very well preserved in these fossils.

Burgess Shale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould.

Amazon.com: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (9780393307009): Stephen Jay Gould: Books

I'll look for that at the local used bookstore I frequent. Stephen Jay Gould was one of the good guys. It was a great loss when he died too soon.