Scientists believe they have identified the oldest fossils on Earth, dating back at least 3.75 billion years and possibly even 4.2 billion years, in rocks found at a remote location in northern Québec, Canada, according to a new study.
If the structures in these rocks are biological in origin, it would push the timeline of life on our planet back by 300 million years at a minimum, and could potentially show that the earliest known organisms are barely younger than Earth itself.
These presumed microbial fossils were originally collected by Dominic Papineau, an associate professor in geochemistry and astrobiology at University College London, during a 2008 expedition to Québec's Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt, a formation that contains some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Papineau and his colleagues reported their discovery in a 2017 paper published in Nature, which sparked a debate over whether the tubes and filaments preserved in the rocks were a result of biological or geological processes.
[...] In the wake of skepticism about the claims of their 2017 study, Papineau and his colleagues employed a host of new techniques to clarify the nature of the mysterious structures in the Canadian rock.
[...] "We don't have any DNA, of course, that survived these geological timescales, with the heat and pressure that the rock has suffered," Papineau said. "But what we can say, on the basis of morphology, is that these microfossils resemble those that are made by the modern microbacterium called Mariprofundus ferrooxydans."
Journal Reference:
Dominic Papineau, Zhenbing She, Matthew S. Dodd, et al., Metabolically diverse primordial microbial communities in Earth's oldest seafloor-hydrothermal jasper [open], Sci. Adv., 8, 15, 2022.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2296
Previously: Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth Found in 3.77-4.28 Billion Year Old Fossils
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Scientists have found fossilized microbes that they have dated to between 3.77 and 4.28 billion years old:
The fossil structures were encased in quartz layers in the so-called Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB). The NSB is a chunk of ancient ocean floor. It contains some of the oldest volcanic and sedimentary rocks known to science.
The team looked at sections of rock that were likely laid down in a system of hydrothermal vents - fissures on the seabed from which heated, mineral-rich waters spew up from below. Today, such vents are known to be important habitats for microbes. And Dr Dominic Papineau, also from UCL, who discovered the fossils in Quebec, thinks this kind of setting was very probably also the cradle for lifeforms between 3.77 and 4.28 billion years ago (the upper and lower age estimates for the NSB rocks).
[...] At present, perhaps the oldest acknowledged evidence of life on the planet is found in 3.48-billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. This material is said to show remnants of stromatolites - mounds of sediment formed of mineral grains glued together by ancient bacteria. An even older claim for stromatolite traces was made in August last year. The team behind that finding said their fossil evidence was 3.70 billion years old. [...] Part of the interest in ancient life is in the implication it has for organisms elsewhere in the Solar System. "These (NTB) organisms come from a time when we believe Mars had liquid water on its surface and a similar atmosphere to Earth at that time," said Mr Dodd. "So, if we have lifeforms originating and evolving on Earth at this time then we may very well have had life beginning on Mars."
Evidence for early life in Earth's oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates (DOI: 10.1038/nature21377) (DX)
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday April 14 2022, @10:21PM (6 children)
So they possibly have nothing but a published paper is a published paper!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @12:24AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @12:47PM (2 children)
Naively, it appears to me that cells are the hard part and blobbing cells together in a bigger living thing should be relatively easy, right? So why wasn't it?
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday April 15 2022, @09:45PM (1 child)
I recall, but can't find, a study that showed predation was a strong selector for evolution of multicellular adaptations. There was a video that showed a critter grazing on unicellular algae but having a very hard time with cells that clumped together.
Perhaps this environment naturally discouraged cooperation and/or predation? I.e. Energy and nutrients were easier to get by displacing neighbors instead of clumping together with them or eating them?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:55PM
One possibility in line with your speculation is maybe that there wasn't enough energy in the environment to support multicellular life for most of that period. The "Great Oxygenation", a period of time over which oxygen levels gradually rose from nothing to around 10-20% of the atmosphere, might have been a necessary driver for advanced organisms.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday April 15 2022, @03:49PM (1 child)
It's a tree.
They found super old rocks, and those rocks have something weird in them.
- A possible explanation for those weird things is it could be a fossilized life.
- - If that is the case, then this life had to have formed super-fast in Earth's history.
- - - If that is the case, then life can evolve super-fast, much more quickly than was previously thought.
- - - - Fast evolution of life increases the probability that we'll find evidence of life on other worlds.
- - - - - Possibly including Mars, which, we think, had not-conditions hospitable to life early in its history.
- - - - - - and if everything above turns out to be true, we **really** should send a rover to look at outcrops of seafloor-hydrothermal jasper on Mars *if* we can find some.
(AFAIK we don't have evidence of plate tectonics in Mars history and assume that's a prerequisite for Hydrothermal vents. That last one might be moot.)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:57PM
Hydrothermal vents need heat and water. Mars has water (more in the past) and volcanic activity (not associated with plate tectonics as far as we know). That would be sufficient for hydrothermal vents.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2022, @10:30PM (1 child)
> For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
- Jesus
That sounds just like covid, meaning covid is Jesus who is God.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @12:03AM
It must suck to have the Christian God in your head, living rent free and all you can do is poke fun at Him.
Such is the sad life of the atheist/occultist.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 15 2022, @12:22AM (1 child)
Well, they do look like bacteria. But they could also be grains of silica.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @01:13PM
Reminds me of the discovery of tiny "bacteria" from a Martian rock years ago. Turns out it was just inorganic mineral deposits.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @12:36AM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @12:47AM
"We don't have any DNA, of course, that survived these geological timescales, with the heat and pressure that the rock has suffered,"
Glad to see we are at least care about something in the environment.
(Score: 2) by Taxi Dudinous on Friday April 15 2022, @02:41PM
It is rather difficult to see much past 600 Million years. Note how large the blocks of time become once we get back that far.
https://cdn.britannica.com/67/73167-050-B9A74092/chart.jpg [britannica.com]
BTW thanks for what you do. I don't even have time to poke around the web on a weekend. It's hard to keyboard when both hands are always full.