A team from Northwest University in Xi’an, China, led by geology professor Hong Hua and postdoctoral researcher Shu Chai are the ones who discovered the Protocodium fossils.
“Protocodium belongs to a known lineage of green algae and has a surprisingly modern architecture, showing that these algae were already well diversified before the end of the Ediacaran period,” Cédric Aria, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).
“Its discovery touches the origin of the entire plant kingdom and puts a familiar name on the organisms that preceded the Cambrian explosion over half a billion years ago, when the world’s first modern ecosystems emerged.”
Reference
Chai, Shu, et al. “A Stem Group Codium Alga from the Latest Ediacaran of South China Provides Taxonomic Insight into the Early Diversification of the Plant Kingdom.” BMC Biology, vol. 20, no. 1, Sept. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-022-01394-0.
