Life starts eating life
Tiny drill holes in microfossils from the Grand Canyon
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The vase-shaped microfossils of the Chuar Group are the tests of amoeba-like protists, dated to around 780 million years. The holes are circular, of consistent size, and placed where an attacker would gain most — a pattern clearly distinct from random decay. Predation changes the rules fundamentally: it introduces an evolutionary arms race in which shells, toxins, speed and camouflage all pay. It is the same dynamic that explodes 240 million years later in the Cambrian, but here we watch it begin in miniature.
For children
In the rocks of the Grand Canyon lie tiny vase-shaped fossils of single-celled creatures with shells. Some have a small round hole — exactly where something drilled in and ate the contents. It is the oldest evidence we have of one organism hunting another.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org