News about important advancements in education around the world
Namibia sponge fossils are world's first animals: study
Scientists digging in a Namibian national park have uncovered sponge-like fossils they say are the first animals, a discovery that would push the emergence of animal life back millions of years.
The tiny vase-shaped creatures' fossils were found in Namibia's Etosha National Park and other sites around the country in rocks between 760 and 550 million years old, a 10-member team of international researchers said in a paper published in the South African Journal of Science.
That means animals, previously thought to have emerged 600 million to 650 million years ago, actually appeared 100 million to 150 million years before that, the authors said.
It also means the hollow globs -- about the size of a dust speck and covered in holes that allowed fluid to pass in and out of their bodies -- were our ancestors, said co-author Tony Prave, a geologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Read more . . .
NIGERIA: Urgent need for more academics with PhDs
Tunde Fatunde
11 December 2011
Issue: 201
Professor Julius Okojie (pictured), executive secretary of Nigeria's regulatory agency the National Universities Commission, has again reminded universities of the urgent need to upgrade the qualifications of academics. He said there were 35,000 lecturers in Nigeria and 21,350 of them - 61% - still did not have a doctoral degree.
Many universities have accelerated their postgraduate programmes to cater for lecturers and those from other universities who are struggling to meet this requirement.
And with many Nigerian university lecturers in the diaspora coming home because of the economic and financial crises in the West, some have been absorbed into universities to assist in postgraduates programmes. Read more . . .
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