SGER: A Search for the Oldest Metazoan Trace Fossils in the Northern Hemisphere

这个项目的重要性在于寻找地球上最古老的后生动物。怀俄明带有后生动物痕迹的单元周围的岩石年龄在2.0 - 2.5 byr之间。这表明这是北美最古老的后生动物的证据。如果我们的初步数据是正确的，这些痕迹的有机性质被证明是明确的，那么后生动物的分子数据将在年龄上更接近岩石证据。此外，这意味着地球大气中氧气的增加，可能足以支持后生动物的生命，这必须发生在2.3 Byrs之前。我们的预期结果将对后生动物古生物学、沉积有机地球化学、含化石地层的地质年代学以及化石和分子数据的比较具有巨大的意义。人们曾经认为“....埃迪卡拉动物群的动物种类繁多，其中一些非常复杂，后生动物一定在很久以前就存在了，没有留下现在已知的痕迹。”（g·g·辛普森，1978年，第101页）。我们有机会证明辛普森是正确的通过一套完整的，全面的方法，通过彻底的，现代的分析。

The importance of the project lies in the search for the oldest metazoan life on Earth. The age of the rocks surrounding the units with the metazoan traces in Wyoming range from 2.0 - 2.5 Byrs., indicating that this is the oldest evidence of metazoan life in North America. If our preliminary data are correct and the organic nature of the traces proves unequivocal, then molecular data of metazoan life will be closer in age to the rock evidence. Further, this would imply that the increase of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere at a level possibly enough to support Metazoan life must have taken place by 2.3 Byrs. Our expected results will have enormous implications to metazoan paleontology, sedimentary organic geochemistry, geochronology of fossil-bearing strata, and comparison of fossil and molecular data. It was once thought that "....the animals of the Ediacara fauna are so varied and some of them are so complex that metazoans must have existed, without leaving traces now known, for a very long earlier time." (G. G. Simpson, 1978, p. 101). We have a chance to prove that Simpson was right utilizing an integrated, full blown approach through a thorough, modern set of analyses.