Researchers have found well-preserved fossils of organisms that lived on the ocean bed about 550 million years ago
Ancient life in China limestone BBC - July 12, 2005
Researchers have found well-preserved fossils of organisms
that lived on the ocean bed about 550 million years ago
Ancient deep-seafungus 'revived' in lab BBC - October 2004
Ancient Sea Spider Fossils Discovered In Volcanic Ash Science Daily - October 2004
New Fossil Links Four-legged Land Animals To Ancient Fish Science Daily - April 2004
Fossil may be earliest arm bone BBC - April 2004
Fossil find shows our underwater ancestors could do press-ups.
A tiny fossil found by a road cutting in Pennsylvania, US, could be the
earliest example of an arm bone.The 360-370-million-year-old humerus,
or upper arm bone, indicates that limbs may have evolved for use
in water and not to get around on land.
"Biggest Fish Ever Found" Unearthed in U.K. National Geographic - October 2003
Prehistoric Sea Creature Discovered Discovery - October 2003 
British and U.S. scientists report the discovery of the unique fossil of aprehistoric sea creature with eyes raised like "twin towers." Living on
the sea floor some 400 million years ago in what is now Morocco,
the hard shelled, many legged animal is the only known complete
specimen of the phacopoid trilobite Erbenochile.
Giant sea fossil unearthed - BBC - January 2003
A complete skeleton of the biggest reptile that ever
existed has been unearthed in Mexico. The fossilised
bones have been identified as those of Liopleurodon
ferox, a fierce predator that ruled the oceans about
150 million years ago
The coelacanth is sometimes called "old four-legs"
December 1, 2000 - BBC
When Pieter Venter went on a recreational deep dive off South Africa's northeast coast in October, he did not expect to come across a living fossil.
``I looked at it carefully and after about six seconds I suddenly realized it was a coelacanth,'' Venter told reporters on Friday.
A fish that had been swimming in the seas for some 400 million years, the coelacanth was believed to have been extinct for 70 million years until one was caught by a trawler off South Africa in 1938 and identified by a museum curator.
Venter said he saw three coelacanths on his October dive, 104 meters (320 feet) below the surface. The discovery was made off Sodwana, a bay renowned for its reefs and diving.
It was the first time a diver outside a submersible craft had seen the ancient species in its natural habitat. They have been observed from submersibles off the Comoro Islands, north of Madagascar.
Venter took a team back to verify the discovery and to try to catch them on film.
``The first sighting was like seeing a UFO without taking a photograph,'' he said.
On November 27, Venter's team found three coelacanths and filmed them at a depth of 115 meters (350 feet).
The expedition was marred by tragedy as one of the team died after surfacing without proper decompression.
The footage, which was shown to journalists, shows three fish ranging in length from one to two meters (three to six feet) ``standing'' on their heads and feeding off the ledge of an underwater canyon.
The coelacanth -- known as ``old four legs'' because of its extra fins -- inhabits deep water caves and canyons, far from the prying eyes of most divers.
Shallowest Find To Date
The Sodawana fish are the shallowest find so far of the species and the only known population that can be reached by divers.
``This discovery suggests that the coelacanth may be far more widespread than was originally believed, perhaps anywhere where you get these deep canyons and old reefs in tropical waters,'' said marine biologist Johann Augustyn.
The only other known population -- which may be a distinct sub-species -- is on the other side of the Indian Ocean, off Indonesia's remote Manado Tua Island.
The Indonesian group only came to light in 1997 when an American marine biologist came across one in a fish market.
Valli Moosa, South Africa's minister for environmental affairs and tourism, told reporters the exact location of the new discovery would be kept under wraps for now and authorities would regulate dives in the area to protect the fish.
``We want no human activity that will cause a disturbance for what is really a very vulnerable species,'' he said.
The area of the discovery is already a protected marine reserve where fishing on the seabed is prohibited.
Life has flourished in the oceans for four billion years
December 1, 2000 - BBC
Life made the transition to land more than a billion years earlier than previously thought, according to new geological evidence.
Organic material discovered within South African rocks suggests that microbes made the leap from the oceans to land about 2.6 billion years ago.
Until now, 1.2 billion-year-old fossils of blue-green algae found in Arizona contained the earliest record of terrestrial life.
The discovery gives scientists new information about the presence of life-sustaining oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere.
An ozone shield and an oxygen rich atmosphere around the planet would have been needed for life on land to emerge.
Organic matter
The rocks come from what is now the Eastern Transvaal district of South Africa.
They contain fossilised remnants of mats of photosynthetic bacteria, organisms that generate oxygen from water and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
"This places the development of terrestrial biomass more than 1.4 billion years earlier than previously reported," said Yumiko Watanabe, of the Pennsylvania State University, US, in the scientific journal Nature.
The researchers believe there may be even earlier fossil evidence of life on land, perhaps in Australia or Canada.
The finding also has implications for the search for life on other planets.
Collaborating scientists at the American space agency Nasa's Astrobiology Institute said they planned to search for signs of ozone around other planets in a future mission.