Image Courtesy of Jonathan Aitchisonaccr,
Joel Kontinen
According to evolution, one mass extinction took place many millions of years ago. The evidence for this was tiny fossils found in Australia. However, the timing of the extinction was very
wrong,
A tiny
pellet of ancient rock, a mere half the size of a grain of rice, has yielded 20
microscopic fossils representing eight different species, including one that is
entirely new to science. The discovery will enhance our understanding of
the second-largest known mass extinction. It also shows how new analytical
techniques are unlocking parts of the fossil record that according to evolution,
have previously gone
overlooked.
Jonathan Aitchison at the University of
Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues extracted the pellet from a rock that
was collected in late 2018 from the Sichuan basin in China, about 300
kilometres south of Xian. The rock is 445 million years old, which means it formed
just before the Late Ordovician mass extinction – the second most severe to
have occurred over the past 500 million years according to evolution.
James Woodford 2026
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