Abderrazak El Albani

Abderrazak El Albani (born in Marrakech ) is a French - Moroccan sedimentologist and paleontologist . He is a professor at the University of Poitiers (Hydrasa Laboratorium / CNRS ) and is best known for the discovery of 2.1 billion year old multicellular fossils in slate near Franceville in Gabon - hence the term "Gabonionts". The fossils represent the oldest multicellular cells discovered to date, reaching a size of up to 17 cm.

Life

Abderrazak El Albani was born in Marrakech, Morocco. He is the youngest of ten siblings. From Marrakech El Albani went to France to study there; his geological dissertation was accepted in 1995. After completing his doctorate, he went to the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein for three years (from 1996 to 1998) , and then in 1999 he was hired at the Laboratory for Hydrogeology and Soil Science at the University of Poitiers, who became the “Center national de la recherche scientifique ”(CNRS) belongs to the national center for scientific research. The title of professor followed in 2010, the year his research results were published in Gabon. Since little had changed in science and almost nothing in public since then, El Albani took the initiative and arranged for a public exhibition of the fossils in the Natural History Museum in Vienna , which mean nothing less than a paradigm shift, i.e. a change in fundamental framework conditions for geology and paleontology of the Precambrian and thus a complete reorientation with regard to the early development of life and the evolution of the terrestrial biosphere in general.

discovery

His decisive discovery were the "Gabonionts", about 2.1 billion years old multicellular cells from the Paleoproterozoic . Northwest of the provincial capital Franceville, around 450 fossils have been recovered from 45 different horizons since 2008, sometimes more than 40 individuals per square meter. While the Precambrian layers are otherwise severely disturbed by erosion , erosion, folds, tectonic movements and other geological processes over billions of years, there is an “incredible stability” (El Albani) of the Franceville basin. The fossil-rich layers belong to the “Franceville Group”, which is part of a well-known series of rocks and stretches over around 35,000 square kilometers in southeast Gabon. It reaches a maximum thickness of around 2,500 meters. This rock group consists of five non-metamorphic, unchanged and undeformed rock layers. Analysis of the lithofacies revealed the complete absence of microbial mats. 2.1 billion years ago, the multicellular organisms existed in calm shallow water enriched with oxygen - probably in colonies at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 30 or 40 meters. They formed an ecosystem with macro and microorganisms (acritarches).

A first article on El Albani's significant discovery was published in Nature in 2010. On June 25, 2014, the joint work of Professor El Albani and 27 other scientists from several countries appeared in “PLOS ONE” (international online journal): “The 2.1 Ga Old Francevillan Biota: Biogenicity, Taphonomie and Biodiversity”. El Albani et al. finally agree: "Overall, it can be said that the Franceville-Biota represents an extraordinary paleoproterozoic oxygen-containing ecosystem that contains several types of macroscopic organisms." The analysis now leads the already excluded claim that the Gabonionts are simply pyrite concretions to the point of absurdity. The analysis of the lithofacies also showed "the absence of microbial mats through the entire fossil-containing layer sequence". This means that the structures cannot be the result of accidental forms of bio mats, but must have a different origin.

literature

• El Albani, A., Bengtson, S., Canfield, DE, Bekker, A., Macchiarelli, R., Mazurier, A., Hammarlund, EU, Boulvais, P., Dupuy, JJ, Fontaine., C, Fürsich, FT, Gauthier-Lafaye, F., Janvier, P., Javaux, E., Ossa, FO, Pierson-Wickmann, AC, Riboulleau, A., Sardini, P., Vachard, D., Whitehouse, M., Meunier , A. 2010. Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago. Nature, 466, 100-104, doi : 10.1038 / nature09166

• El Albani, A., Bengtson, S., Canfield, DE, Riboulleau, A., Rollion Bard, C., Macchiarelli, R., Ngombi Pemba, L., Hammarlund, E., Meunier, A., Moubiya Mouele, I., Benzerara, K., Bernard, S., Boulvais, P., Chaussidon, M., Cesari, C., Fontaine, C., Chi-Fru, E., Garcia Ruiz, JM, Gauthier-Lafaye, F ., Mazurier, A., Pierson-Wickmann, AC, Rouxel, O., Trentesaux, A., Vecoli, M., Versteegh, GJM, White, L., Whitehouse, M., Bekker A. 2014: The 2.1 Ga Old Francevillian Biota: Biogenicity, Taphonomy and Biodiversity. PLoS ONE 9 (6): e99438. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0099438

• El Albani, A., Macchiarelli, R., Meunier, A. 2016. Aux origines de la vie - une nouvelle histoire de l'évolution. Dunod Paris, 224 pp., Numerous. b / w fig. in the text, 8 color plates. ISBN 978-2-10-073791-8 .

• Troppenz, U.-M., Schmälzle, D. 2015. Where the tracks lead - the new image of the Precambrian: Franceville, Montana and Ediacarafauna. Tetrada Parchim, 192 p., 162 color illustrations, 2 time tables. ISBN 978-3-00-047871-0 .

• Troppenz, U.-M. 2017. The New Precambrian - no "boring", but bustling billions in a succession of evolutions and global catastrophes. Tetrada Parchim, 140 p., 115 color illustrations, 2 time tables. ISBN 978-3-00-054215-2 .

Web links

• Profile on the website of the University of Poitiers (French)