Scientists Discover Evidence of Oldest Life on Earth
Rusty tubes from northeastern Canadian hydrothermal vent deposits that represent the oldest microfossils and evidence for life on Earth.
Matthew DoddScience nerds are still giddy from last week’s discovery of seven earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby star, in part because it brings researchers closer to the most tantalizing question of all: How can we find life on other planets?
It would help if we had some idea of how life started on earth. A geological breakthrough announced on Wednesday in Nature makes that question slightly easier to answer. Scientists examining the chemical makeup of some of the Earth’s oldest rocks, located in northeastern Canada, may have found the oldest-known chemical fossils of bacteria. The team believes they are the remains of microbes that thrived near volcanic vents on the sea-floor from 3.8 to 4.3 billion years ago.