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watch One-Minute World News Last Updated: Friday, 24 October,
2003, 01:50 GMT 02:50 UK Farmer's fossil find excites Fossil
(Pic: University of South Australia) The fossil is 560 million
years old A sheep farmer in Australia has discovered a fossil of
the world's oldest vertebrate - the common ancestor of all
animals with a backbone.  Sheep station owner Ross Fargher found
the fossil among a number of strange shapes embedded in
sandstone slabs on his farm. But after taking it home, he left
it on his veranda for four years before scientists identified
its importance.  At 560 million years old, the fossil is around
30 million years older than the next oldest vertebrate remains
found so far, in China.  "All that came before it presumably was
something that was absolutely microscopic, the size of an amoeba
or a tiny organism, that wouldn't be represented in the fossil
record," palaeontologist Dr Jim Gehling, of the Museum of South
Australia in Adelaide,