Eukaryotic Organisms in Proterozoic Oceans The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Knoll, Andrew H., Emmanuelle J. Javaux, David Hewitt, and Phoebe A. Cohen. 2006. Eukaryotic organisms in Proterozoic oceans. Philosophical Transactions- Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences 361(1470): 1023-1038. Published Version doi:10.1098/rstb.2006.1843 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3822896 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Eukaryotic Organisms in Proterozoic Oceans A.H. Knoll1,*, E.J. Javaux2, D. Hewitt1 and P. Cohen3 1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02139, USA 2Department of Geology, University of Liège, Sart-Tilman 4000 Liège, Belgium 3Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138, USA *Author for correspondence (
[email protected]) 2 The geological record of protists begins well before the Ediacaran and Cambrian diversification of animals, but the antiquity of that history, its reliability as a chronicle of evolution, and the causal inferences that can be drawn from it remain subjects of debate. Well-preserved protists are known from a relatively small number of Proterozoic formations, but taphonomic considerations suggest that they capture at least broad aspects of early eukaryotic evolution. A modest diversity of problematic, possibly stem group protists occurs in ca.