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AI: Dr Maoyang Zhu has discovered a unique 1.56 billion-year-old fossil in northern China that he believes is the oldest known multicellular eukaryote on Earth. The discovery pushes the evolutionary frontier of multicellularity back a billion years and challenges fundamental assumptions about the evolution of life on Earth. The second discovery, the 1.63-billion-year-old microfossil of Qingshania magnifica, confirms the first discovery and provides new insight into the “boring billion,” a period between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago that was thought to show little change in evolution and ecology.