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What became the frozen tundra of Siberia may have yielded some of the earliest animal life on Earth, according to newly released research involving a Kansas University faculty member.

"It's not the place you think about as the cradle of life," said Bruce Lieberman, associate professor of geology at KU.

Bruce Lieberman displays a 520 million year-old trilobite he found in Canada's Northwest Territories. The Kansas University associate professor of geology is publishing a paper next week with a colleague from the University of Florida showing that animal life on earth may have originated in Siberia. Lieberman displayed the Cambrian-era fossil on Thursday in his office in Lindley Hall.

The research, to be published next week in the London Journal of the Geological Society, examined rocks and fossils of trilobites -- the ancient ancestors of crabs and lobsters -- to determine how the split-up of an ancient "supercontinent" called Pannotia affected early life on Earth.

Lieberman worked with Joe Meert, a professor at the University of Florida who examines magnetic minerals in rocks, to determine their original location. Lieberman's research on the evolution of trilobites helped support Meert's rock data, and vice versa.

This 515 million-year-old trilobite from Pennsylvania is from a collection at the Yale University Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Using their dual research tracks, the pair determined Pannotia, which originally was near the South Pole and then drifted to near the equator, split up gradually over a period of about 80 million years at a rate of about six inches per year. The split-up began about 580 million years ago.

Then about 300 million years ago, the continents re-fused to form Pangea, another supercontinent.

Although trilobites appear to have originated in Siberia, the ancient Siberia, then located near the equator, was a far cry from the land it is today. Then, it was warm and covered in water.

Fossil of trilobite.

"It's the environment you'd expect to find more in the Bahamas," Lieberman said. "It's not the same place."

He examined trilobites he gathered in the field and those at natural history museums, comparing their size and structure to determine a family tree for the animals.

The analysis indicated trilobites, which are among the earliest animals in the fossil record, apparently existed before the fossil record indicates. Lieberman said no one had been able to explain why there weren't fossils of the earlier trilobites.

"What we're showing with this is the fit of the continents gives us an idea that, whatever root stock of trilobites was, those were around much earlier than the fossil record," Meert said.

Interview with Bruce Lieberman Scientists have new theory on ice age (12-29-03) London Journal of the Geological Society KU Geology department Trilobite.com More on Lieberman Text: Did a gamma-ray burst initiate the late Ordovician mass extinction? Nature: Gamma-ray burst linked to mass extinction

Trilobites represent one of the most prolific life forms of the Cambrian period, which was 543 million to 490 million years ago, shortly before a major explosion of animal life.

Meert said the research would give scientists a better understanding of evolutionary trends and could be used by the oil industry because Cambrian-era rocks also tend to contain oil.

Lieberman has been studying trilobites since his time as an undergraduate at Harvard University.

"I think they're very cool animals," he said. "They're cool to look at, and they're good to study in terms of the fossil record. I always say after dinosaurs, trilobites are everybody's favorite fossils."