Life began on Earth 200 million years earlier – Overview

The oldest fossils in the world – with an age of 3.7 billion euros – were discovered in Greenland, according to a scientific paper published in the journal Nature . Discovered by Australian scientists and the United Kingdom, the fossils were found in an area that had been permanently covered by ice but in recent years, was exposed because of the warming Arctic.

These are stromatolites formations resulting from overlapping layers of microorganisms. The stromatolite word of Greek origin, means precisely layer ( stroma ) and rock or stone ( lithos ).

According to the authors of the discovery, fossils formed in marine ponds shallow. The be confirmed as a proof of life, scientists believe they can now place the beginning of the existence of life on Earth 4 billion years ago, when the planet’s surface was still bombarded by meteorites. It will also be proof that life began 220 million years earlier than was thought before, based on fossils discovered in Australia that placed the earliest signs of its existence 3.5 billion years.

in a comment to the article, Abigail

Allwood, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, notes that the finding raises a pertinent question for scientists who study the emergence of micro-organisms on Earth. “Life has just begun after a long planetary evolution, when a suitable environment allowed their emergence, or, on the contrary, his cot was an Earth as a child?” He asks. For Abigail, if life found an anchor in such a harsh environment, where the atmosphere still prevailed carbon dioxide and methane and the surface of the planet was hit regularly by meteorites, “then life is not capricious, reluctant and one thing unlikely. “