A few million years off

Florida Citizens for Science vice president Joe Meert led a team that made an important discovery. That research is in the journal Precambrian Research, as well as in National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. He found out that the known age of a certain Indian basin is off a few million years, which solves a number of problems that had popped up before. (I don’t have a lot of time to look into this, but I’m pretty sure this is “old” news, so I don’t know why the UF news site is publishing the item now. In any case, it’s still a worthwhile read.)

The 500-million-year discrepancy is controversial in the science world.

The findings could alter aspects of the theory of evolution. Scientists have always believed in a Cambrian explosion resulting in a rapid appearance of most major groups of complex, multi-cellular animals, Meert explained.

Yet multi-cellular life, in the form of soft-bodied Ediacaran organisms, was discovered in the Vindhyan basin, leading Meert and co-authors to suggest that the explosion may have been more of a slow burn.

[edited: I corrected the post title and some post text. The age of the entire earth was not at question, but rather the age of a particular Indian basin. I blame my mistake on early morning posting.]