The oldest green seaweed on record, the ancestor of all land plants, lived about 1 billion years ago, a new study finds.
Scientists have discovered the fossils of what may be the oldest green algae ever known. The newfound seaweed — called Proterocladus antiquus — lived about a billion years ago. And even though it was tiny, about 0.07 inches (2 millimeters) in length, the algae had a big role: It could produce oxygen through photosynthesis.
“Its discovery indicates that green plants we see today can be traced back to at least 1 billion years ago, and they started in the ocean before they expanded their territory to the land,” study lead researcher Qing Tang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, told Live Science in an email.