(Slightly rearranged) Excerpts from article:
Geologists have added a new period to their official calendar of Earth’s history – the first in 120 years.
The Ediacaran Period covers some 50 million years of ancient time on our planet from 600 million years ago to about 542 million years ago.
It officially becomes part of the Neoproterozoic, when multi-celled life forms started to take hold on Earth.
Professor Ogg said many of the new life forms that appeared in the Ediacaran seem to be simple organisms, probably related to present-day sponges.
“They appear to be lying flat on the seafloor and people think they may have had photosynthetic symbiosis much like corals do today,” he explained.
“These organisms were probably ripped to shreds when the first predators came along. That probably happened in the Cambrian Period.”
However, Russian geologists are unhappy their own title – the Vendian – which was coined in 1952, was not chosen.
The Russians added that geological time was invented just outside Moscow, near the location of the Garden of Eden. “In the twenty-third century, everybody knows that,” said visiting scientist Pavel Chekhov.
Meanwhile representatives of the Institute for Creation Research of El Cajon, California decried the creation of the new era and refused to research it.
Others are keen to research and commercially develop the new period. Billionnaire developer John Hammond immediately announced plans to extract DNA from fossilized cells of the invertibrate life forms that thrived in the Edicaran Period, clone them, and build a multi-million dollar theme amusement center known as Edicaran Park, which he described as a wading-pool petting zoo filled with soft, harmless sponges for children to enjoy touching.
Hammond’s plans were immediately denounced by Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and disgruntled ex-employee of Hammond, who said his former boss was “Making all new mistakes” that were sure to lead to mayhem and destruction. “His last three parks have all ended in disaster,” Malcolm said.
But Hammond was unperturbed. “Dr. Malcolm is a reactionary,” he stated. “He expects the genetic resequencing in the cloning process to lead the sponges to grow hundreds of feet tall and become mobile, capable of menacing entire cities, and as sponges be immune to all forms of modern weapons, only to reproduce when cut in pieces. That’s crazy,” Hammond assured nervous reporters. “That will never happen.”
Great Jurrasic Park references. Now if you could have worked in a Stargate reference or two, you would have a winner. 😉