15 JULY 2021
Newly discovered microfossils some 3.42 billion years old are the oldest evidence yet of a particular type of methane-cycling microbe life – and they could help us understand how life gets started in the first place, both on Earth and further out into the Universe.
These life forms would have originally existed just below the seafloor in pockets of a rich liquid soup, created from the mixing of cooler seawater from above and the warmer hydrothermal fluids rising up from the depths.
The new findings may answer some of the questions about how and where life first began during the Paleoarchean era (3.2-3.6 billion years ago), or whether indigenous microorganisms like this were around even earlier in Earth s history.
Methane-Cycling Microbes Fossilized 3 42 Billion Years Ago Offer New Insight on Early Life
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3 4 Billion-Year-Old Microfossils Discovered in South Africa
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