A HARPENDEN geologist has made a major discovery, putting back the date of the first complex life on Earth 55 million years, and solving a conundrum that puzzled Charles Darwin.

Charlotte Stalvies, 30, who was brought up in Townsend Lane and is a former head girl of St George's School, worked with a team at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) , which has just published a ground-breaking paper in the leading scientific magazine Nature.

Previously, scientists had always assumed from the fossil record that the first animals evolved over a relatively short period of about ten million years, in what was known as the Cambrian Explosion some 540 million years ago. In earlier periods, it seemed, only the most primitive single -celled organisms existed.

Even Darwin, the discoverer of evolution and the father of biology, struggled to explain this sudden explosion of biodiversity, and he speculated that complex life must have begun to evolve much earlier, predicting that evidence would one day be found.

Now, through detailed chemical analysis of rocks from Oman known to be 635 million years old, Charlotte and her colleagues have found traces of sea creatures such as sponges.

She said: “There are two ways of looking at the new findings - this research either puts the first appearance of animals back to 100 million years before complex life becomes abundant in the record, or it pushes back the date 55 million years before the currently accepted date for the earliest evidence

“It's incredible to think that every animal from earthworms to blue whales ultimately evolved from the sponges that we found in these ancient sediments in Oman.

This year marks both the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his most famous book On the Origin of Species.

“ It's great to have these results published in such a special year.”

Charlotte, now living and working in Perth, Australia, spent four years on the research, splitting her time between Boston and the universities of Nottingham and Newcastle. Her proud father Christopher Stalvies said: “Charlotte was always interested in science as a child – she was always asking how things worked.

“Within hours of publication this paper was widely reported in other scientific journals and websites, including the BBC Science page where it was the lead article.”

Charlotte is now performing geological chemical analysis for oil exploration for the Australian government.

Her mother Diane told the Review: "We are very proud of Charlotte but to be honest I can't understand much of it - it is quite a difficult subject.

"Unfortunately she had to go to Australia to get a job.

"She loves it out there, especially the weather. We hope to go out there ourselves to see her later this year."
http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news...life_on_Earth/

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture07673.html