The DOI matches its Crossref record; 69 of the 69 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A one-billion-year-old multicellular chlorophyte
Open accessAbstract
Chlorophytes (representing a clade within the Viridiplantae and a sister group of the Streptophyta) probably dominated marine export bioproductivity and played a key role in facilitating ecosystem complexity before the Mesozoic diversification of phototrophic eukaryotes such as diatoms, coccolithophorans and dinoflagellates. Molecular clock and biomarker data indicate that chlorophytes diverged in the Mesoproterozoic or early Neoproterozoic, followed by their subsequent phylogenetic diversification, multicellular evolution and ecological expansion in the late Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic. This model, however, has not been rigorously tested with palaeontological data because of the scarcity of Proterozoic chlorophyte fossils. Here we report abundant millimetre-sized, multicellular and morphologically differentiated macrofossils from rocks approximately 1,000 million years ago. These fossils are described as Proterocladus antiquus new species and are interpreted as benthic siphonocladalean chlorophytes, suggesting that chlorophytes acquired macroscopic size, multicellularity and cellular differentiation nearly a billion years ago, much earlier than previously thought.
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“More recent analyses have tended to resolve an older LECA, with ages closer to 1 Ga being less plausible on the basis of fossils from that period that can uncontroversially be assigned to crown Archaeplastida.”
From ATP synthase evolution on a cross-braced dated tree of life (2023) · cites this paper as [100]
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“and more recently with reports of macroscopic multicellular green algae at ∼1.0 Ga (Tang et al., 2020).”
From Oxygenation, Life, and the Planetary System during Earth's Middle History: An Overview (2021) · cites this paper as Tang et al., 2020
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Cites
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Keeling, P. J. (2013) · Annual Review of Plant Biology · doi:10.1146/annurev-arplant-050312-120144 · Cited by 498
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Strassert, J. F. H., Irisarri, I., Williams, T. A., & Burki, F. (2021) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22044-z · Cited by 298
Cyanobacteria and biogeochemical cycles through Earth history
Sánchez-Baracaldo, P., Bianchini, G., Wilson, J. D., & Knoll, A. H. (2022) · Trends in Microbiology · doi:10.1016/j.tim.2021.05.008 · Cited by 279
Oxygenation, Life, and the Planetary System during Earth's Middle History: An Overview
Lyons, T. W., Diamond, C. W., Planavsky, N. J., Reinhard, C. T., & Li, C. (2021) · Astrobiology · doi:10.1089/ast.2020.2418 · Cited by 211
“…to 1.6 Ga stem eukaryote remains (Zhu et al., 2016), and emergence of the crown group, expressed in simple multicellular red algae, is placed at *1.05 Ga (Butterfield, 2000; Gibson et al., 2018) and more recently with reports of macroscopic multicellular green algae at *1.0 Ga (Tang et al., 2020).”
BackgroundInfluentialHarris, B. J., Clark, J. W., Schrempf, D., Szöllősi, G. J., Donoghue, P. C. J., Hetherington, A. M., & Williams, T. A. (2022) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-022-01885-x · Cited by 187
Sedimentary Ce anomalies: Secular change and implications for paleoenvironmental evolution
Zhang, K., & Shields, G. (2022) · Earth-Science Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2022.104015 · Cited by 162
Metadata
- Authors
- Tang, Q., Pang, K., Yuan, X., & Xiao, S.
- Affiliations
- Virginia Tech (US)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Tang, Qing
- Xiao, Shuhai
- Venue
- Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Published
- 2020-02-24
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 543-549
- ISSN
- 2397-334X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8668152
- OpenAlex
- W3008173880
- Cited by
- 186
- References
- 69
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 11
- FWCI
- 16.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Ecology & Evolution (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (41602007)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC18K1086)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Protist diversity and phylogeny
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Plant Diversity and Evolution
- Keywords
- Chlorophyta, evolution of multicellularity, benthic algae, cell differentiation, molecular clock, Neoproterozoic, Paleozoic
- MeSH terms
- Fossils, Phylogeny, Diatoms, Ecosystem
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