Experts claim to have found the world’s oldest fossils. According to British and Australian researchers, the microscopic bacteria lived some 3.43billion years ago in a hot, hostile environment free of oxygen. The creatures are believed to have thrived on the sulphur spewed out by volcanoes – making them similar to the modern bugs that can make our bathroom drains less than fragrant.
Old timers: The microscopic fossils were formed from bacteria that lived 3.4 billion years ago
Their fossils, which are too small to see with the naked eye, were found nestled between grains of sand on the world’s oldest beach in Strelley Pool, in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia.Lead researcher Dr David Wacey, of the University of Western Australia, said: ‘On the early Earth, where oxygen was rare or absent, evolving life had to employ other means to survive.
'The ability to breathe sulphur compounds has long been thought to be one of the earliest stages of transition from a non-biological to a biological world.’
Some experts are adamant that the world’s oldest fossils are stromatolites, which have existed for 3.5billion years, but Professor Martin Brasier of the University of Oxford said they could have been formed through chemical processes. By contrast, tests on the new discoveries confirmed they were once alive, and not merely formed through mineralisation, the journal Nature Geoscience reports. Professor Brasier suggested that the findings open the possibility of finding early life elsewhere. ‘Could these sort of things exist on Mars? It’s just about conceivable,’ he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment