Possible Neoproterozoic sponge fossil.

[erik simpson]

Some news descriptions of a possible sponge fossil are:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/do-these-fossilized-structures-belong-earth-s-first-animals

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9

The article being descibed is currently open source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03773-z

and can be downloaded as a PDF.

The rocks in which the (possible) fossils are found are ~890 Mya in northwestern Canada. "Possible" is operative in this case, as the fossils
are very suggestive, but. Interesting paper in any event.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 6:20:50 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> Some news descriptions of a possible sponge fossil are:
>
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/do-these-fossilized-structures-belong-earth-s-first-animals

Very interesting, but also a strange case of "ignoring the elephant in the room and moving on."
The title of the article goes: "Do these fossilized structures belong to Earth’s first animals?"

And the second sentence of text goes:

"If the claim bears out, the structures would represent the oldest animal fossils yet found."

But the article focuses after that about whether these things are sponges and never returns
to the theme of these two announcements. And "the elephant in the room" is a collection of gigayear-old
fossils believed to be of animals, or at least stem animals. The author, science journalist Michael Price,
doesn't seem to know about them, yet they were described in a prestigious journal:

"A possible billion-year-old holozoan with differentiated multicellularity,"
by Paul K. Strother, Martin D. Brasier, David Wacey, Leslie Timpe,
Martin Saunders, Charles H. Wellman,
Current Biology 31, 1--8 June 21, 2021

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2821%2900424-3

You and John and I commented on it in several posts, and Glenn (I hear you going "hiss" :)
and Trolidous ("yay!" I say, and you can too) each doing one post. I did the OP:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/2KXAzM6x-q4/m/Nc8Q2U5jAQAJ
Billion year old fossils of an exciting new sort
May 28, 2021, 10:07:55 PM

[Yeah, almost a month before the putative date of the article. I haven't tried to figure that one out.]



> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9

The title blares it out in big type: "Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal"
and the caption to the video in the middle of the article is similar.

But the author, Max Kozlov, seems oblivious to that earlier article in _Current_Biology_.

> The article being descibed is currently open source:
>
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03773-z

Here, the whole situation is turned on its head. The title,
"Possible poriferan body fossils in early Neoproterozoic microbial reef,"
gives no mention of this "earliest known animal" possibility; nor does the Abstract;
nor do the Background and Results sections of the article. But a good bit down in
the Discussion we suddenly see:

"possible evidence of 1-billion-year-old multicellular holozoans [49],"

and Lo! [49] is our old friend from _Current_Biology_ on that other thread .


Truly, a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

> and can be downloaded as a PDF.
>
> The rocks in which the (possible) fossils are found are ~890 Mya in northwestern Canada. "Possible" is operative in this case, as the fossils
> are very suggestive, but. Interesting paper in any event.

I wonder when and where we can expect a resolution.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[erik simpson]

What does it matter what science jounalists of varying stretchiness of imagination say about a scientific
publication? It's obvioiusly (?) a fossil, and its morphology is suggestive. I imagine there will be an effort
to see what biochemical markers may be present. It's certainly conceivable that it's a sponge, but it's
not conceivably certain. Whether or not the 2 Gya organisms represent metazoans is arguably of comparable
certainty (or uncertainty).

[Oxyaena]

The 2Gyo organisms probably represent an early experiment into
multicellularity that didn't really pan out after oxygen levels dropped
again after the GOE. I'd be surprised if they really are metazoans, the
earliest certain putative fossils of Opisthokonts known are 1.1 gyo
fungal fossils found in the Canadian Arctic:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31118507/

The time span between 1.1-2 gya is a difference of 900 million years,
and contrary to Peter's hand-wringing about "a mere gigayear" a while
back, 900 million years IS a long time.

[erik simpson]

To paraphrase Walt Kelly, there's nothing mere about a gigayear. Even 100 million
is a long time. At 2 Gy, multicellular organisms would seem to be almost impossible
to identify with metazoa. Maybe Holozoa, but we really don't have a good idea what
life looked like that far back, and the use of molecular clocks amounts to serious
extrapolation.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, August 3, 2021 at 12:29:05 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 6:55:48 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 6:20:50 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> > > Some news descriptions of a possible sponge fossil are:
> > >
> > > https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/do-these-fossilized-structures-belong-earth-s-first-animals

> > Very interesting, but also a strange case of "ignoring the elephant in the room and moving on."
> > The title of the article goes: "Do these fossilized structures belong to Earth’s first animals?"
> >
> > And the second sentence of text goes:
> >
> > "If the claim bears out, the structures would represent the oldest animal fossils yet found."
> >
> > But the article focuses after that about whether these things are sponges and never returns
> > to the theme of these two announcements. And "the elephant in the room" is a collection of gigayear-old
> > fossils believed to be of animals, or at least stem animals.

"stem animals" refer to extinct organisms that are more closely related to animals than to other holozoans.
Their more organized and differentiated multicellular structure may put them closer to animals
than to choanoflagellates and other mostly one-celled holozoans.

"believed to be..." is partly based on the following popularization of the scientific article on these organisms:

"Billion-year-old fossil reveals missing link in the evolution of animals"
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/billion-year-old-fossil-reveals-missing-link-evolution-animals#

> > The author, science journalist Michael Price,
> > doesn't seem to know about them, yet they were described in a prestigious journal:
> >
> > "A possible billion-year-old holozoan with differentiated multicellularity,"
> > by Paul K. Strother, Martin D. Brasier, David Wacey, Leslie Timpe,
> > Martin Saunders, Charles H. Wellman,
> > Current Biology 31, 1--8 June 21, 2021
> >
> > https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2821%2900424-3

As you can see, the "missing link" article was less cautious in the wording of its title. It advanced the
hypothesis that these were stem animals in the sense I gave up there, but without the use of "stem".

> > You and John and I commented on it in several posts, and Glenn (I hear you going "hiss" :)
> > and Trolidous ("yay!" I say, and you can too) each doing one post. I did the OP:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/2KXAzM6x-q4/m/Nc8Q2U5jAQAJ
> > Billion year old fossils of an exciting new sort
> > May 28, 2021, 10:07:55 PM
> >
> > [Yeah, almost a month before the putative date of the article. I haven't tried to figure that one out.]

We also commented on the "missing link" popularization, which I linked already in the OP.

> >
> >
> > > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9
> >
> > The title blares it out in big type: "Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal"
> > and the caption to the video in the middle of the article is similar.
> >
> > But the author, Max Kozlov, seems oblivious to that earlier article in _Current_Biology_.
> > > The article being descibed is currently open source:
> > >
> > > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03773-z
> > Here, the whole situation is turned on its head. The title,
> > "Possible poriferan body fossils in early Neoproterozoic microbial reef,"
> > gives no mention of this "earliest known animal" possibility; nor does the Abstract;
> > nor do the Background and Results sections of the article. But a good bit down in
> > the Discussion we suddenly see:
> >
> > "possible evidence of 1-billion-year-old multicellular holozoans [49],"
> >
> > and Lo! [49] is our old friend from _Current_Biology_ on that other thread .
> >
> >
> > Truly, a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

<snip of earlier text, not commented on this time>

> What does it matter what science jounalists of varying stretchiness of imagination say about a scientific
> publication?

Yeah, what does it matter whether the public is under the mistaken impression that these are serious
scientists who care about the data in the very article which they are popularizing?

Who gives a hoot about that, as long as the authors aren't creationists, eh? :-(

> It's obvioiusly (?) a fossil, and its morphology is suggestive. I imagine there will be an effort
> to see what biochemical markers may be present. It's certainly conceivable that it's a sponge, but it's
> not conceivably certain. Whether or not the 2 Gya organisms represent metazoans is arguably of comparable
> certainty (or uncertainty).

What 2 Gya organisms? Perhaps you should leave off bottom posting if your short-term memory
isn't good enough to get such simple one-liners as the following straight:

"possible evidence of 1-billion-year-old multicellular holozoans [49],"

This is from the peer-reviewed paper which both of the two "science journalists" were covering,
so you don't have the excuse that someone of whom you've cooked up a negative opinion wrote it.


Just look at how Oxyaena blindly followed you, and then made a demeaning crack
based on ignorance, further perpetuating your mistake.


And then you made another crack just now, blindly following her.


Would either of you have EVER caught your <cough> "minor" <cough> 1gya mistake, if I hadn't posted this?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[erik simpson]

I will not comment further. My "2 Gy" was a slip, your incivility is not, eh?

[Oxyaena]

On 8/3/2021 4:54 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 3, 2021 at 12:29:05 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
>> On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 6:55:48 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 6:20:50 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
>>>> Some news descriptions of a possible sponge fossil are:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/do-these-fossilized-structures-belong-earth-s-first-animals
>
>>> Very interesting, but also a strange case of "ignoring the elephant in the room and moving on."
>>> The title of the article goes: "Do these fossilized structures belong to Earth’s first animals?"
>>>
>>> And the second sentence of text goes:
>>>
>>> "If the claim bears out, the structures would represent the oldest animal fossils yet found."
>>>
>>> But the article focuses after that about whether these things are sponges and never returns
>>> to the theme of these two announcements. And "the elephant in the room" is a collection of gigayear-old
>>> fossils believed to be of animals, or at least stem animals.
>
> "stem animals" refer to extinct organisms that are more closely related to animals than to other holozoans.
> Their more organized and differentiated multicellular structure may put them closer to animals
> than to choanoflagellates and other mostly one-celled holozoans.
>

[snip idiocy]

>
>
>> It's obvioiusly (?) a fossil, and its morphology is suggestive. I imagine there will be an effort
>> to see what biochemical markers may be present. It's certainly conceivable that it's a sponge, but it's
>> not conceivably certain. Whether or not the 2 Gya organisms represent metazoans is arguably of comparable
>> certainty (or uncertainty).
>
> What 2 Gya organisms? Perhaps you should leave off bottom posting if your short-term memory
> isn't good enough to get such simple one-liners as the following straight:

You really don't know? Here's a refresher for you, Peter:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630171711.htm

>
> "possible evidence of 1-billion-year-old multicellular holozoans [49],"
>
> This is from the peer-reviewed paper which both of the two "science journalists" were covering,
> so you don't have the excuse that someone of whom you've cooked up a negative opinion wrote it.

Sensationalism sells, Peter.

>
>
> Just look at how Oxyaena blindly followed you, and then made a demeaning crack
> based on ignorance, further perpetuating your mistake.
>
>
> And then you made another crack just now, blindly following her.
>
>
> Would either of you have EVER caught your <cough> "minor" <cough> 1gya mistake, if I hadn't posted this?

Says the asshole blustering about a "mere billion years."

[Oxyaena]

Oh? So you weren't aware of it either. Well, here's a link to catch you up:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630171711.htm

I'm surprised neither of you were aware of this.

[erik simpson]

Thanks, I'd missed it. I was thinking of the ~1 Gya "possible Holozoan" fossils, but wrote 2 Gya by
mistake. Confusio regnat. Even so, I'm done with Peter.

[Oxyaena]

Fair, that is entirely reasonable. I don't expect Peter to man up enough
to admit HE's the one who made the mistake.

[Peter Nyikos]

> > > > > The article being described is currently open source:

> I will not comment further. My "2 Gy" was a slip,

Unintentional? or a joke? Keep in mind that your role model Harshman has me under suspicion
of insanity for not being able to recognize jokes.

> your incivility is not, eh?

Since when do YOU care about civility?

Incivility on the level I used is not a vice in dealing with a devil-may-care attitude about whether science
journalists are distorting the public perception of the contents of papers in _Nature_.

And in the same way, to boot: one headline says,
"Do these fossilized structures belong to Earth’s first animals?" in _Science_, no less.

The other headline is less cautious:
"Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal" -- news item in _Nature_, no less.

But both articles freely admit that the identification as a sponge is quite controversial,
with other possible interpretations very far even from holozoans.

The second headline is in the same journal, _Nature_, in which the peer-reviewed article
appeared, the very article that both journalists are ostensibly reviewing.

Yet the only hint in THAT article goes the other way as far as "first animals" are concerned,
if these are not sponges:

"possible evidence of 1-billion-year-old multicellular holozoans [49],"

Note: Holozoa is a clade that includes Animalia, and there is no commitment here as to where
in Holozoa the "possible evidence" points. For details, see the article in [49], linked far above.


I estimate that at least a hundred times more people read these popularizations than they do
the original peer-reviewed articles. Evidently you don't care whether the people who are
excited by these two articles waste a lot of time thinking in only one direction which might not pan out.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

**************** QUOTE OF THE DAY *******************

"The public be damned."

-- attributed to W. H. Vanderbilt; for details see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Vanderbilt

[Ruben Safir]

erik simpson <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 3, 2021 at 10:28:48 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 8/3/2021 12:29 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>> > On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 6:55:48 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >> On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 6:20:50 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
>> >>> Some news descriptions of a possible sponge fossil are:
>> >>>
>> >>> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/do-these-fossilized-structures-belong-earth-s-first-animals
>> >> Very interesting, but also a strange case of "ignoring the elephant in the room and moving on."

>> >> The title of the article goes: "Do these fossilized structures belong to Earth???s first animals?"

>> >>
>> >> And the second sentence of text goes:
>> >>
>> >> "If the claim bears out, the structures would represent the oldest animal fossils yet found."
>> >>
>> >> But the article focuses after that about whether these things are sponges and never returns
>> >> to the theme of these two announcements. And "the elephant in the room" is a collection of gigayear-old
>> >> fossils believed to be of animals, or at least stem animals. The author, science journalist Michael Price,
>> >> doesn't seem to know about them, yet they were described in a prestigious journal:
>> >>
>> >> "A possible billion-year-old holozoan with differentiated multicellularity,"
>> >> by Paul K. Strother, Martin D. Brasier, David Wacey, Leslie Timpe,
>> >> Martin Saunders, Charles H. Wellman,
>> >> Current Biology 31, 1--8 June 21, 2021
>> >>
>> >> https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2821%2900424-3
>> >>
>> >> You and John and I commented on it in several posts, and Glenn (I hear you going "hiss" :)
>> >> and Trolidous ("yay!" I say, and you can too) each doing one post. I did the OP:
>> >>
>> >> https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/2KXAzM6x-q4/m/Nc8Q2U5jAQAJ
>> >> Billion year old fossils of an exciting new sort
>> >> May 28, 2021, 10:07:55 PM
>> >>
>> >> [Yeah, almost a month before the putative date of the article. I haven't tried to figure that one out.]
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9
>> >>

>> >> The title blares it out in big type: "Sponge-like fossil could be Earth???s earliest known animal"

One of the things that suprised scientist when genetic evaluation was
possible of microbial organisms, even bacterium, was the depth of the
of evolutionary tree that was produced. For starters, we are not nearly
equaly realated to most bactrium, and Eurakarites branch from the
smallest portion of Bacterium, and Multicellular plants and animals
likewise. It would seem obvious now, but at the time, it was a shock to
see that billions of years of evolution seperated Bacterium species.

And the suprises just kept on coming

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123014634500115

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(19)30257-5#secst0095

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440604/ <<==execellent
read

[Oxyaena]

Welcome back, ruben. Long time no see.

[Peter Nyikos]

Ruben! It's so good to see a post from you again. I'm just sorry I've missed it until now,
and I hope you are still around.

On Saturday, August 7, 2021 at 10:35:03 PM UTC-4, Ruben Safir wrote:
> erik simpson <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, August 3, 2021 at 10:28:48 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
> >> On 8/3/2021 12:29 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> >> > On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 6:55:48 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >> On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 6:20:50 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> >> >>> Some news descriptions of a possible sponge fossil are:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/do-these-fossilized-structures-belong-earth-s-first-animals

> >> >> Very interesting, but also a strange case of "ignoring the elephant in the room and moving on."

> >> >> The title of the article goes: "Do these fossilized structures belong to Earth's first animals?"

> >> >>
> >> >> And the second sentence of text goes:
> >> >>
> >> >> "If the claim bears out, the structures would represent the oldest animal fossils yet found."
> >> >>
> >> >> But the article focuses after that about whether these things are sponges and never returns
> >> >> to the theme of these two announcements. And "the elephant in the room" is a collection of gigayear-old
> >> >> fossils believed to be of animals, or at least stem animals. The author, science journalist Michael Price,
> >> >> doesn't seem to know about them, yet they were described in a prestigious journal:
> >> >>
> >> >> "A possible billion-year-old holozoan with differentiated multicellularity,"
> >> >> by Paul K. Strother, Martin D. Brasier, David Wacey, Leslie Timpe,
> >> >> Martin Saunders, Charles H. Wellman,
> >> >> Current Biology 31, 1--8 June 21, 2021
> >> >>
> >> >> https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2821%2900424-3
> >> >>
> >> >> You and John and I commented on it in several posts, and Glenn (I hear you going "hiss" :)

> >> >> and Trolidous ("yay!" I say, and you can too) each [did] one post. I did the OP:

> >> >>
> >> >> https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/2KXAzM6x-q4/m/Nc8Q2U5jAQAJ
> >> >> Billion year old fossils of an exciting new sort
> >> >> May 28, 2021, 10:07:55 PM
> >> >>
> >> >> [Yeah, almost a month before the putative date of the article. I haven't tried to figure that one out.]
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9
> >> >>

> >> >> The title blares it out in big type: "Sponge-like fossil could be Earth's earliest known animal"

> >> >> and the caption to the video in the middle of the article is similar.
> >> >>
> >> >> But the author, Max Kozlov, seems oblivious to that earlier article in _Current_Biology_.
> >> >>> The article being descibed is currently open source:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03773-z
> >> >> Here, the whole situation is turned on its head. The title,
> >> >> "Possible poriferan body fossils in early Neoproterozoic microbial reef,"
> >> >> gives no mention of this "earliest known animal" possibility; nor does the Abstract;
> >> >> nor do the Background and Results sections of the article. But a good bit down in
> >> >> the Discussion we suddenly see:
> >> >>
> >> >> "possible evidence of 1-billion-year-old multicellular holozoans [49],"
> >> >>
> >> >> and Lo! [49] is our old friend from _Current_Biology_ on that other thread .
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Truly, a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

> >> >>> and can be downloaded as a PDF.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> The rocks in which the (possible) fossils are found are ~890 Mya in northwestern Canada. "Possible" is operative in this case, as the fossils
> >> >>> are very suggestive, but. Interesting paper in any event.
> >> >> I wonder when and where we can expect a resolution.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Peter Nyikos
> >> >> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> >> >> University of South Carolina
> >> >> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >> >
> >> > What does it matter what science jounalists of varying stretchiness of imagination say about a scientific

> >> > publication? It's obviously (?) a fossil, and its morphology is suggestive. I imagine there will be an effort

> >> > to see what biochemical markers may be present. It's certainly conceivable that it's a sponge, but it's
> >> > not conceivably certain. Whether or not the 2 Gya organisms represent metazoans is arguably of comparable
> >> > certainty (or uncertainty).
> >> >
> >> The 2Gyo organisms probably represent an early experiment into
> >> multicellularity that didn't really pan out after oxygen levels dropped
> >> again after the GOE. I'd be surprised if they really are metazoans, the
> >> earliest certain putative fossils of Opisthokonts known are 1.1 gyo
> >> fungal fossils found in the Canadian Arctic:
> >>
> >> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31118507/
> >>
> >> The time span between 1.1-2 gya is a difference of 900 million years,
> >> and contrary to Peter's hand-wringing about "a mere gigayear" a while
> >> back, 900 million years IS a long time.
> >
> > To paraphrase Walt Kelly, there's nothing mere about a gigayear. Even 100 million
> > is a long time. At 2 Gy, multicellular organisms would seem to be almost impossible
> > to identify with metazoa. Maybe Holozoa, but we really don't have a good idea what

> > life looked like that far.

I don't know whether you noticed, Ruben, that all of the above was based on a mistaken
notion of what I had been talking about. And I still have no idea what Oxyaena was quoting
from when she wrote, "a mere gigayear." I can only hazard a guess that it had something
to do with the early universe, whereby the distinction between 1.5 gigayears and 2.5
gigayears since the beginning is far smaller than the distinction between 0.5 and 1.0
gigayears since the beginning of our universe, so great were the changes in those
first billion years.

> One of the things that suprised scientist when genetic evaluation was
> possible of microbial organisms, even bacterium, was the depth of the
> of evolutionary tree that was produced. For starters, we are not nearly
> equaly realated to most bactrium,

Really? Are you lumping together eubacteria and archae? In that case, you
are just referring to what has been pretty well accepted since Woese
gave the evidence for it forty or more years ago. Specifically, archae are
all more closely related to us than eubacteria where our nuclear genomes are concerned.
On the other hand, our mitochondria are more closely related to eubacteria
than they are to ourselves.

> and Eurakarites branch from the smallest portion of Bacterium,

"smallest" in what sense? methanogenic archae, for example, may have been far more
diverse when the amount of free oxygen on earth was negligible -- perhaps until more
than half of the earth's age had gone by.

> and Multicellular plants and animals likewise.

Plants and animals are eukaryotes, so I'm not sure what you mean here.
Besides, fungi have been fairly universally considered to be closer to animals than
to plants, so you have to be careful about what you call a "smallest portion" within Eukarya.

> It would seem obvious now, but at the time, it was a shock to
> see that billions of years of evolution seperated Bacterium species.

To whom? since prokaryotes have been on earth for over 3 billion years,
the really shocking thing would be to discover that all eubacteria alive
today go back less than a billion years.

>
> And the suprises just kept on coming
>
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123014634500115
>
> https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(19)30257-5#secst0095
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440604/ <<==execellent
> read

I only had time so far to read the abstract, but it is right in line with something I've
suspected for decades: that there is so much lateral gene transfer even in mammals
that geography, especially in places cut off from others by natural barriers, causes
lots of false ideas about the phylogenetic tree even in such advanced animals.

One example especially struck me long ago: the clade Afrotheria, with such highly
dissimilar examples as golden moles, elephant shrews (also known as sengis), tenrecs, aardvarks,
and hyraxes, was established in defiance of morphology [1] and on the basis of genomics.

I think the isolation of Africa for much of the Cenozoic made for much lateral transfer of genetic information
with the help of e.g. retroviruses, much of it mediated by insect vectors and parasites, which could not
pass the natural barriers to other continents.

And this may have influenced the genomes in ways that mask true phylogenetic relationships.

[1] Morphology established over a century ago that hyraxes are related to elephants, sea cows,
and some extinct orders, in the superorder Paenungulata, despite huge differences in external appearance;
and here the genetically based phylogenies agree. On the other hand, morphology distanced them from all the other
animals I named, and aardvarks from them and from all the others. The evidence cited for distancing
from all other animals in the Wikipedia entry is weak enough to allow for lateral transfers. Besides,
in one case (many vertebrae) the absence of Xenartha, where it is most pronounced, from Afrotheria
is telling.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Ruben Safir]

Sure - 40 years ago. Why not. I am an old man now and I recall seeing
the genetic tree being graphed and discussed when I was a kid, in my
20's. It was one of those - gee whiz -- moments when in the face of
evidence, it is obvious. But it was a complete revelation at the time

[Peter Nyikos]

Something seems to have gone wrong with this post of yours, Ruben,
and I'm sorry I've only seen it now; I hope you are still around, and
can tell us what you were referring to in your first sentence.

Peter Nyikos