Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service

with me, Catherine Harvey. Today, I'm taking you back to the late 1960s and a huge breakthrough

in our understanding of the evolution of the world. It was unexpected. No one was expecting

fossils in their old rocks. I've been speaking to Indian geologist Dr. Shiva Ballet-Misra,

who in 1967 made a discovery that provided us with the oldest record of multicellular organisms

to inhabit the earth. On the rock surface, some impressions which look like leaves,

when I saw those impressions in the fossils, there was not much doubt about those being organic.

It was here on the stormy coastline of the island of Newfoundland

of Canada's most easterly point that a young master's student found fossils that provide the

earliest known evidence of multicellular life on the planet. Shiva Ballet-Misra was just 27 years old

and a graduate student. As part of his master's studies, he needed to carry out fieldwork

at an area called Mistaken Point, located at the southeastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula.

It's a place where crashing waves meet towering cliffs and the weather can change in the blink of an

eye. Indeed, Mistaken Point gets its name from the fact that in foggy conditions throughout history,

sailors often confused it for the safety of nearby Cape Race, another tip of land further along

the coast, but Shiva Misra's groundbreaking discovery nearly didn't happen at all.

Mistaken Point's wild weather, its dangerous terrain, as well as potentially life-threatening wildlife,

almost put him off. Some of my Canadian friends, they said there are lots of

moose and all kinds of animals and this and that. But his teacher and mentor convinced Shiva

that Mistaken Point was well worth exploring. My teacher, Professor W.D. Brookner,

said it's a virgin area, nobody has worked on this, and you can make discoveries there.

One of my Indian friends had declined to go there, so Professor Brookner said it will be a

...