Word: kakabekia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...after Siegel's discovery, Harvard Paleontologist Elso S. Barghoorn reported that he had found 2-billion-year-old microfossils near Kakabeka Falls in western Ontario. Among them were a number of fossils that bore no resemblance to any living organism. One was an elaborate structure that Barghoorn named Kakabekia umbellata. When Siegel saw a photograph of Kakabekia, he exclaimed: "I've seen that thing before." Indeed, some specimens of Barghoorn's fossil and Siegel's living organism were remarkably similar. "When photographs of the two were compared," says Karen Roberts, one of Siegel's research...
Siegel's discovery poses a fascinating possibility that has long intrigued other scientists. The earth's once ammonia-and methane-rich atmosphere has since been recast through the release of subterranean gases and the evolution of oxygen-producing photosynthetic plants. Siegel believes that the Kakabekia-like organism has survived for "a billion years or more" by living on ammonia from the breakdown of proteins in earth. Citing spectroscopic analyses of Jupiter, which indicate that its atmosphere still contains large amounts of ammonia, Siegel theorizes that space explorers on Jupiter may some day meet living relatives of his discovery...
...Barghoorn and Tyler selected 800 promising samples and ground them to paper thinness. Studied under a microscope, they showed a great variety of organisms. Few of them resemble anything that still lives today, and their discoverers gave them such fanciful scientific names as Eoastrion (little dawn star), Kakabekia (after a waterfall in Ontario) and Eosphaera (dawn sphere...
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