Colossal Single-Cell Organism Found on Ocean Floor

[JPhillips]

Slowly rolling across the ocean floor, a humble single-celled creature is poised to revolutionize our understanding of how complex life evolved on Earth.

A distant relative of microscopic amoebas, the grape-sized Gromia sphaerica was discovered once before, lying motionless at the bottom of the Arabian Sea. But when Mikhail Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and a group of researchers stumbled across a group of G. sphaerica off the coast of the Bahamas, the creatures were leaving trails behind them up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) long in the mud.

The trouble is, single-celled critters aren't supposed to be able to leave trails. The oldest fossils of animal trails, called 'trace fossils', date to around 580 million years ago, and paleontologists always figured they must have been made by multicellular animals with complex, symmetrical bodies.

But G. sphaerica's traces are the spitting image of the old, Precambrian fossils; two small ridges line the outside of the trail, and one thin bump runs down the middle.

At up to three centimeters (1.2 inches) in diameter, they're also enormous compared to most of their microscopic cousins.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/1...-cambrian.html

[WSUCougar]

Offensive genius Mikhail Matz?

[QuikSand]

I think we are going to have to refer this news item and thread title to the FOFC Official Colossal Designation Subcommittee for review.

[Coffee Warlord]

3 centimeters is not colossal.

I henceforth make a motion to dismiss this claim of colossalhood.

[Crim]

3 centimeters for a unicellular organism? This, my friends, if true, is collossal.

[JPhillips]

Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology.

Thomas Cochrane

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

3 centimeters is not colossal.

I henceforth make a motion to dismiss this claim of colossalhood.

Originally Posted by Crim

3 centimeters for a unicellular organism? This, my friends, if true, is collossal.

If nothing else, it's a colossal cell. Even if it's not a colossal organism.

[Julio Riddols]

I guess maybe if I start promoting my junk as a unicellular organism, chicks won't giggle and point as often.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

I guess maybe if I start promoting my junk as a unicellular organism, chicks won't giggle and point as often.

You're going to tell them you have a 1.2" penis?

Let me know how that goes for you.

[Julio Riddols]

but its colossal.

[M GO BLUE!!!]

Walk up to any random woman and ask if she has heard about the colossal one-celled organism that left 20 inch long trails in the Bahamas.