Newly discovered 3.77-billion-year-old fossils could be oldest evidence of life on Earth. - Polidicks

[URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/03/01/newfound-3-77-billion-year-old-fossils-could-be-earliest-evidence-of-life-on-earth/?utm_term=.95ef376e5367&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&pushid=breaking-news_1488391477"]Washington Post[/URL] [quote]Tiny, tubular structures uncovered in ancient Canadian rocks could be remnants of some of the earliest life on Earth, scientists say. The straw-shaped “microfossils,” narrower than the width of a human hair and invisible to the naked eye, are believed to come from ancient microbes, according to a new study in the journal Nature. Scientists debate the age of the specimens, but the authors' youngest estimate — 3.77 billion years — would make these fossils the oldest ever found. Claims of ancient fossils are always contentious. Rocks as old as the ones in the new study rarely survive the weathering, erosion, subduction and deformation of our geologically active Earth. Any signs of life in the rocks that do survive are difficult to distinguish, let alone prove. Other researchers in the field expressed skepticism about whether the structures were really fossils, and whether the rocks that contain them are as old as the study authors say. But the scientists behind the new finding believe their analysis should hold up to scrutiny. In addition to structures that look like fossil microbes, the rocks contain a cocktail of chemical compounds they say is almost certainly the result of biological processes. If their results are confirmed, they will boost a belief that organisms arose very early in the history of Earth — and may find it just as easy to evolve on worlds beyond our own. “The process to kick-start life may not need a significant length of time or special chemistry, but could actually be a relatively simple process to get started” said Matthew Dodd, a biogeochemist at University College London and the lead author on the paper. “It has big implications for whether life is abundant or not in the universe.” [Melting ice in Greenland exposes some of Earth's oldest fossils] The microfossils were discovered in rocks from the Nuvvuagittuq (nuh-vu-ah-gi-took) belt in northeastern Canada. This strip of iron-rich jasper now cuts across the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, but it was once a hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor. Billions of years ago, Dodd and his colleagues say, ancient microbes flourished around those vents, taking advantage of their chaotic chemistry to generate fuel. When the microbes died, iron in the water was deposited on their decaying bodies, replacing cellular structures with stone. The rocks that contained them were buried, heated, squashed, and then forced upward to form the part of North America where they now sit. Depending on the dating method used, the material could be as old as 3.77 billion years — or as stunningly ancient as 4.28 billion years.[/quote] [img]https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2017/03/Image-2-iron_structures3.5_200x-1024x776.jpg&w=1484[/img] :science101:

3.77 Billion years is a fucking insane amount of time. What was Earth even like back then? No form of life bigger than a penny? Just purely insects that would fuck your shit up?

[QUOTE=Adamhully;51895305]3.77 Billion years is a fucking insane amount of time. What was Earth even like back then? No form of life bigger than a penny? Just purely insects that would fuck your shit up?[/QUOTE] First insects showed up 407-396 Million years ago. This is far, far, far before that

To be clear, this evidence may not hold up under further scrutiny - as the full article points out, there are a number of skeptics with valid criticisms, but the evidence presented also supports the claim made by the researchers. Be a good idea to follow this and see how it turns out. If this is proven true, it could mean that life forms easily and almost immediately (on a cosmic scale) as soon as conditions allow it.

There weren't any insects, or anything nearly that complex. Multicellular life didn't even arise until nearly half a billion years ago. The earliest life is thought to be stuff like bacteria, as is evidenced in the fossil record by structures like these: [t]http://www.fossilmall.com/Science/stromatolite-fossils/cochabamba/ST075A.jpg[/t] And life was more or less like this for nearly the entirety of the existence of Earth.

Sounds like a vegan's idea of heaven.

[QUOTE=archangel125;51895265][URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/03/01/newfound-3-77-billion-year-old-fossils-could-be-earliest-evidence-of-life-on-earth/?utm_term=.95ef376e5367&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&pushid=breaking-news_1488391477"]Washington Post[/URL] [img]https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2017/03/Image-2-iron_structures3.5_200x-1024x776.jpg&w=1484[/img] :science101:[/QUOTE] hey it's my x150m grand pepep

[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;51895568]hey it's my x150m grand pepep[/QUOTE] Hey mine to! Whats up long lost relation!

I was always taught that Earth was just a big ball of magma up until like 2 billion years ago, or is that not the case? Never mind I guess I got my info confused, nevertheless it's pretty rad if true.

[QUOTE=Adamhully;51895305]3.77 Billion years is a fucking insane amount of time. What was Earth even like back then? No form of life bigger than a penny? Just purely insects that would fuck your shit up?[/QUOTE] Nah. Mostly bacteria and other single cells. Very, very basic "multi-cellular" things at their most complex. Like we're talking a photosynthetic cell that excretes something that another cell consumes so they develop a relationship where by the second cell in some way happens to guarantee the survival of the first, and in return the first cell continues providing food for the second since it happens to keep existing, thus evolutionary bit here and these two combinations of cell become more common since they're the most fit to survive, etc. Not even proper organisms as we think of them at this point yet really. Eventually these cells would coincidentally manage to combine with other cells and they'd eventually, by sheer coincidence and the helping hand of every non-functional combination dying off, begin to form complex life such as plants and animals. At the end of the day it's both amazing and complex to think about, but also really fucking dull. [editline]1st March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Derek_SM;51895689]I was always taught that Earth was just a big ball of magma up until like 2 billion years ago, or is that not the case? Never mind I guess I got my info confused, nevertheless it's pretty rad if true.[/QUOTE] You're not too far off considering we're talking billions of years ago and the definition of life being mildly subjective. But the oldest fossils prior to this put cellular life at about 3.5 billion years. This news of 3.8 is really interesting because prior to this we only had chemical evidence which suggested that life [I]might[/I] be around nearly 4 billion years old. For reference, the Earth as a planet is only about 4.55 billion years old. This figure actually comes from dating moon rocks and meteorites since the earth's crust recycles due to subduction zones and such. The oldest minerals dated on Earth are something like 4.1 billion years iirc. Essentially this means that the Earth had cellular life on it a mere near half billion years after it formed if true. The grand implication for such information would be related to our ability to find or not find other complex life in our universe relative to the age of the system we're looking in if we base the formation of cellular life and complex life off our own planet's history with it. IIRC, the first true multi-cellular organism we know of is an algae that's about 1.2 billion years old, and soft bodied "animals" come in around the beginning of the last billion. So if we're talking half a million give or take a few hundred million for life to even appear from planet creation, and a factor of at last 75% of the time after that where the life isn't even multi-cellular before complex life even begins to emerge, we're looking at a pretty long time to even find things. We could well be the first complex life on our side of, or even in our galaxy with those odds, we just don't know. Shit for all we know, in the next galaxy over there might be billions of civilisations because the elements that make up their form of life was more suited to rapid early evolution for some reason.

[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;51895568]hey it's my x150m grand pepep[/QUOTE] Ancient Canadians. [editline]1st March 2017[/editline] To elaborate on how we know how old the Earth is, meteors found within our system would've formed around the same time our planet did, from the same stuff. So meteorites can be dated by studying how much of the Uranium within them has decayed into lead to get an accurate age of the planet. [editline]1st March 2017[/editline] The man who did the experiment and uncovered this truth was also the one who discovered that leaded gasoline - which was the standard used by the big oil companies at that time - was responsible for slowly poisoning people nationwide, and he was opposed by scientists paid off by big oil to dispute his findings that the lead level in the atmosphere did not match the lead level in the rest of nature. They even tried to claim that there was no scientific evidence proving that lead was harmful to humans. Sounds really familiar to the modern climate change debate, doesn't it? Eventually, though, he won.

How can life be 3.7 billion years old when only 7 million people on earth?