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On the seafloor near the Bahamas, researchers have discovered a single-celled organism about the size of a grape, and they say the unusual organism raises interesting questions about the evolution of complex, multicellular animals. The oversized protists were found at the end of long, linear tracks that appear to have been made by the slowly rolling amoebas; lead researcher Mikhail Matz says the tracks resemble fossilized impressions from over 1 billion years ago, which scientists had assumed were made by multicellular worms. “We were looking for pretty animals that have eyes, are coloured, or glow in the dark; instead, the most interesting find was the organism that was blind, brainless, and completely covered in mud,” he said [ BBC News ]. The origin of multicellular life has been shrouded in mystery, because few animals fossils have been found that predate the beginning of the Cambrian Period around 542 million years ago.
Grape-Sized Amoeba Raises Questions About Origins of Animal Life | 80beats
On the hunt for the universal intelligence test. Credit: SINC How do you use a scientific method to measure the intelligence of a human being, an animal, a machine or an extra-terrestrial? So far this has not been possible, but a team of Spanish and Australian researchers have taken a first step towards this by presenting the foundations to be used as a basis for this method in the journal Artificial Intelligence , and have also put forward a new intelligence test. "We have developed an 'anytime' intelligence test, in other words a test that can be interrupted at any time, but that gives a more accurate idea of the intelligence of the test subject if there is a longer time available in which to carry it out", José Hernández-Orallo, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), tells SINC.
On the hunt for universal intelligence
Darwin: The Origin of Species Charles Darwin’s celebrated work ‘The Origin of Species’ appeared in 1859, work that he himself described as ‘one long, continuous reasoning’.... 9/11 -The collapse of the WTC Twin Towers: the scientific conclusions