Geologists found in Canada, the oldest traces of life on Earth
MOSCOW, 1 Mar — RIA Novosti. Geologists found in the vicinity of Quebec the earliest date traces of germs under the age of 4.28 billion years, indicating the appearance of life almost immediately after the birth of the planet, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.
“Our discovery supports the hypothesis that life appeared on Earth at hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor almost immediately after the planet formed. The rapid emergence of life on Earth sits well with other recent findings, indicating that 3.7 billion years ago, microbes have formed the entire layers of sedimentary rocks,” said Matthew Dodd (Matthew Dodd) from University College London (UK).
The first living organisms appeared on Earth during the Archean era, and while there is no generally accepted point of view about how and when life began.
To date, there is some fossil evidence that germs already existed in the primary ocean of the Earth about 3.4 billion years ago, but many scientists believe that life could arise much earlier in this level.
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Three years ago, Japanese geologists have found hints that life has existed on Earth for about 3.7 billion years ago, studying samples of graphite from the isua formation, formed at the same time in Greenland. Last year, scientists found the first unambiguous evidence for the existence of life in that era, and in 2015, they found in Australia a putative traces of life inhabiting the Earth’s oceans 4 billion years ago.
Dodd and his colleagues say they managed to find the “real” traces of life that existed for nearly as much and the planet, studying rocks, one of the most ancient rocks on earth, occurring in the vicinity of Quebec, capital of Canada.
This layer, the so-called Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone belt, formed at least 3,78 billion years ago, however, the proportion of long-lived radioactive isotopes of some elements indicate that it could occur much sooner — 4.28 billion years ago, only 200 million years after the formation of the Sun and Earth.
In these rocks, says Dodd, and his team managed to find a lot of unusual elongated “tubes” with a length of several micrometers, filled with hematite, iron oxide. The crystal structure in these tubes, according to geologists, identical to the deposits of hematite that occur on the seabed from geothermal sources, which are bacteria that feed on iron and inorganic compounds.
Near deposits of hematite scientists also found deposits of graphite and Apatite, which usually result from the decomposition and fossilization of the remains of living beings. Both believe Dodd and his colleagues, clearly indicates that hematite and other deposits are the product of vital activity of the first organisms of the Earth.
The tubes with hematite, in turn, were inside a small hollow spheres of millimeter and centimeter size, which, according to the researchers, was the result of gases from the decomposition of microbes after their death.
“All this suggests that life appeared on Earth when the Earth and Mars was suitable for life and had oceans of water, which poses interesting questions about the existence of extraterrestrial life. Therefore, we believe that Mars should be present traces of life in rocks formed 4 billion years ago,” concludes Dodd.