Life in the Universe More Common Than Thought; Here's What Fossil Clues Reveal

On an outcrop of exposed volcanic and sedimentary rock on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, researchers have discovered what may be the earliest fossilized lifeforms ever discovered.

An INVERSE report said that the microbial ancestors lived from 3.75 to 4.28 billion years back, only 300 million years following the formation of Earth itself, a blink of an eye in geologic timescales.

If life developed this fast on this planet, it proposes that the so-called abiogenesis, the process by which non-living matters turn into a living organism, is possibly easy to attain, and life in the universe may be more typical than humans ever thought.

The evidence for such early lifeforms comes from a rocky outcrop called the Nuvvuagittug Supracrustal Belt, which was once deep below the ocean close to a system of hydrothermal vents.

Strengthening the 'Case of Fire'

The Belt has since climbed to the surface, after many millennia of geologic change, as well as tectonic activity. Several years back, the scientists found tiny filaments in the Belt which seemed to have been made by bacteria, but the evidence was inconclusive.

They could not rule out chemical procedures that might produce similar patterns in the rock. Since then, the team has been investigating samples from the Belt more carefully, and this month, published a new study in Science Advances strengthening the "case for life."

Not only did the study investigators discover more examples of the filaments, tubes spheres like those first described many years back, but they discovered a larger, more complicated structure, "tree-like" in shape with parallel branches, that is unlikely to have a chemical description.

Not only does the new study proposes a biological origin for the fossils, but it also proposes early diversity, with lifeforms attaining energy from different sources.

Mineralized chemical by-products in the rock propose that bacteria in the Belt lived off the iron, sulfur, and perhaps, carbon dioxide and light, a form of photosynthesis.

Existence of Microbes on Earth Up to 4.8 Billion Years Ago

In a similar report from Universe Today, Dominic Papineau, lead author of the study explained that with the use of many different lines of evidence, their research strongly suggests a number of different types of microbes were present on Earth from 3.75 to 4.28 billion years ago.

To rule out chemical and geological explanations for the fossils, the research team put the specimens through various tests.

Viewing paper-thin slices of the rock beneath microscopes, they identified that the filaments are better preserved in vine quartz, which is less vulnerable to metamorphic evolution compared to rough quartz.

This then, proposes that the filaments were not developed through metamorphism, which means the squeezing and heating of rock.

In a similar way, they looked at the rare earth elements' level in the Belt and compared them to similarly-aged formations of rocks anywhere in the world, to more precisely date the area and validate that the fossils were in fact, as old as they appear.

Report about the fossil clues is shown on UCL Mathematical and Physical Sciences' YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Fossils in Science Times.