Talk:Bicellum brasieri

Age of fossil

Both of the sources cited in this article used the phrase "billion-year old" to describe the age of the fossil. I edited the article to reflect the age given in the sources. Epictrex has reverted that edit to restore the wording "billions of years old", which is not supported by the cited sources. Epictrex's edit summary misrepresents my previous edit summary. - Donald Albury 18:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I changed the date lol. There was no date anywhere on this Wikipedia page after you edited it. Epictrex (talk) 18:54, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

You said that “one billion years, billions of years old is pushing it”, so you also said that one billion years is pushing it too. Epictrex (talk) 18:57, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

And one more personal attack like this edit summary when you deleted another users post on this talk page, "Donald Albury was being rude and ignoring me", is liable to get you a time out. You have been warned enough over the issue, comment on content not the user. You do not have very many free passes left, I foresee a block in your future to give you time to contemplate the rules here if it happens again. Heiro 02:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I’m sorry for saying that Donald Albury was being rude to me, and Donald Albury, I am sorry for saying you were being rude to me. You just weren’t answering what I had to say. Epictrex (talk) 23:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Are you saying that I was ignoring you because I had not responded within an hour and a half to something you posted? - Donald Albury 01:13, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Metazoan, holozoan, or multicellular protist

A piece in Sci-News, here, calls B. brasiei a "freshwater protist" in the lead. The article has quotes from two of the authors of the report in Current Biology. Charles Wellman describes B. brasieri as "the first step towards a complex multicellular sturcture," and adds that the fossil "suggests to us that the evolution of multicellular animals had occurred at least one billion years ago and that early events prior to the evolution of animals may have occurred in freshwater like lakes rather than the ocean." Paul Strother says, "What we see in Bicellum brasieri is an example of ... a genetic system ... that may have been incorporated into the animal genome half a billion years later."

So, the BBC, and other news sources, may have gone a bit too far in calling it possibly the earliest animal. The announcing article does call B. brasieri a protist, but other references to its affinities would place it in Holozoa. By definition, holozoans that are not animals or fungi are protists, but I will argue that emphasizing that B. brasieri is a protist distorts its position in relation to Animalia. - Donald Albury 13:44, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

There is no need to emphasise protist, as that just means not a animal, plant or fungi. It says little about its characteristics or even what characterisitics it lacks. The article does emphasise the holozoan affinity: Thus, in terms of its multicellular condition, B. brasieri seems to be most closely associated with early-branching holozoan groups, especially Ichthyosporea and the Pluriformea (Corallochytrea) clade.13,29 These groups are all unicellular protists with a multi-cellular stage in their life cycle, typically occurring in the form of a spherical cell mass.30 Perhaps this can be paraphrased somehow? —  Jts1882 | talk  16:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)