The Canadian Press: Harvard researchers uncover proof of ancient tiny shield-like fossils in Yukon
Phoebe Cohen was awestruck when she first looked through a high-powered electron microscope at a rock sample hammered out of the wilderness of the Yukon.
What she saw was 800 million-year-old fossilized evidence that organisms were trying to protect themselves by forming their own shield-like plates.
It is the oldest evidence ever of biomineralization, the use of minerals by a living thing to form a hard shell, similar to the way clams or lobsters form their own protection. The tiny fossils date back between 717 and 812 million years.
“It’s just amazing to think about the fact that I’m the first person to ever see this specimen in the whole history of humanity,” Cohen said with a laugh in a telephone interview. “It makes all of the other hard work and drudgery definitely worth it.”
The drudgery started in June 2007 when she and fellow Harvard University PhD student, Francis Macdonald, travelled to Eagle, Alaska, a remote community on the Yukon River along the U.S.-Canada border.