section_path: Evolution/Fossils
section_name: Fossils
paragraph_text: Fossils
  
  The timing of the origin of eukaryotes is hard to determine but the discovery of Qingshania magnificia, the earliest multicelluar eukaryote from North China which lived during 1.635 billion years ago, suggests that the crown group eukaryotes would have originated from the late Paleoproterozoic (Statherian); the earliest unequivocal unicellular eukaryotes which lived during approximately 1.65 billion years ago are also discovered from North China: Tappania plana, Shuiyousphaeridium macroreticulatum, Dictyosphaera macroreticulata, Germinosphaera alveolata, and Valeria lophostriata.
  
  Some acritarchs are known from at least 1.65 billion years ago, and a fossil, Grypania, which may be an alga, is as much as 2.1 billion years old. The "problematic" fossil Diskagma has been found in paleosols 2.2 billion years old.
  
  Structures proposed to represent "large colonial organisms" have been found in the black shales of the Palaeoproterozoic such as the Francevillian B Formation, in Gabon, dubbed the " Francevillian biota " which is dated at 2.1 billion years old. However, the status of these structures as fossils is contested, with other authors suggesting that they might represent pseudofossils. The oldest fossils than can unambiguously be assigned to eukaryotes are from the Ruyang Group of China, dating to approximately 1.8-1.6 billion years ago. Fossils that are clearly related to modern groups start appearing an estimated 1.2 billion years ago, in the form of red algae, though recent work suggests the existence of fossilized filamentous algae in the Vindhya basin dating back perhaps to 1.6 to 1.7 billion years ago.
  
  The presence of steranes, eukaryotic-specific biomarkers, in Australian shales previously indicated that eukaryotes were present in these rocks dated at 2.7 billion years old, but these Archaean biomarkers have been rebutted as later contaminants. The oldest valid biomarker records are only around 800 million years old. In contrast, a molecular clock analysis suggests the emergence of sterol biosynthesis as early as 2.3 billion years ago. The nature of steranes as eukaryotic biomarkers is further complicated by the production of sterols by some bacteria.
  
  Whenever their origins, eukaryotes may not have become ecologically dominant until much later; a massive increase in the zinc composition of marine sediments 800 million years ago has been attributed to the rise of substantial populations of eukaryotes, which preferentially consume and incorporate zinc relative to prokaryotes, approximately a billion years after their origin (at the latest).