World's Oldest Fossils Found On Australian Beach 80
sciencehabit writes "Researchers say they have discovered the fossils of 3.4-billion-year-old cells in between the cemented sand grains of an ancient beach in Western Australia, possibly the oldest fossils ever found (abstract). Chemical analyses of the minerals near the cells suggest the microorganisms depended on sulfur for fuel. Such a beach might have been life's first breeding ground, one author says."
Beaches are common for breeding... (Score:2)
...especially in the presence of the ancient dried form of the life form Cannabis.
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So Eden, then?
You have VERY clearly never been to Port Hedland.
They just left it laying there? (Score:3)
That was careless. You'd think people would pay more attention to their fossils.
Re:They just left it laying there? (Score:4, Funny)
If they were Australian fossils, that's probably just where they happened to pass out.
It all makes sense now (Score:1)
Those "Life's a Beach" bumper stickers at least
She was only 58 (Score:1)
Well, not quite fossils (Score:2)
Closer and closer to the earliest chance (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA notes that this work was done by Martin Brasier's team and that Brasier has generally been a strong critic of a lot of the claims about early fossilized life. That may be strong evidence that this claim should be taken seriously. However, there have been times before where scientists have criticized claims coming from other groups even as they've made nearly identical claims. It looks like Brasier et al. have done much more careful chemical work than some of the other early life claims which makes this look promising but this probably won't be completely clear until a bit more work by other groups is done. It is also important to note that it is extremely unlikely that we are finding the very first life. Most likely, life had to be pretty common already in order for it to have a decent chance to leave fossils. This means that one can tentatively guess that life arose at least a few million years before when these fossils were formed.
We keep pushing farther and farther back in time when life arose on Earth. This is important since it helps us figure out just how likely life is to arise in general. The argument goes that if life is easy to start then we should expect to see life arise soon after heavy bombardment of Earth begins. And that's what we do seem to be seeing. This suggests that life may be plentiful. There's a substantial very recent argument against this line of reasoning by David Spiegel and Edwin Turner http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-astrophysicists-logic-downplay-probability-extraterrestrial.html [physorg.com]. Spiegel and Turner argued that if it generally takes a lot of time to get intelligent life to develop then intelligent life will have an observer bias since it will only arise on the planets where life started very early. This means that seeing life early on in our history might be something which we should expect even if life arises really rarely.
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Re:Closer and closer to the earliest chance (Score:5, Interesting)
Spiegel and Turner's argument based on observer bias leaves out other key necessary events leading to intelligence, most notably multicellularity and the emergence of large, complex (eukaryotic) cells. After the origin of life, it took at least 2 billion years to make this major leap in complexity to eukaryotes, and over 1 billion years after that until multicellular, developmentally complex (e.g., metazoan) organisms evolved. As these two necessary events are singular, unlikely, and highly contingent on specific existing physiologies and selective pressures (i.e., there was nothing stopping something like eukaryotes from emerging much, much earlier if the right endosymbioses happened), then the 4 billion years that have passed before the emergence of intelligence largely reflects the rarity of these events, and does nothing to inform us about the minimum necessary time for intelligence to emerge, or the abundance of life expected in the universe. Additionally, the role of mass extinctions in severely diminishing biodiversity and curtailing the largest, most successful groups of animals during each event also cause an over-estimation of necessary time to technological intelligence, with the observed time, even since multicellularity emerged, being largely a product of the frequency and intensity of these random events.
Take home message: Evolution is both a mechanistic and historical science, and one has to take both kinds of processes into account to draw any general conclusions from the timing of events.
IAAEBAPS (I am an evolutionary biologist and planetary scientist).
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What is a second genesis, and how would you observe that one has or hasn't happened?
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"...life had to be pretty common already..."
How are you talking about our forefathers?
We were the best yellow slime on the beach!
Not like that red or green one.
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Just a perfect example of your average IT mindset. Have to create those off-site backups of your DNA. Can't just reproduce here on Earth.
probably wasn't a beach... (Score:1)
4.5 billion years ago... just sayin'. Heck, I don't even think there was liquid water yet. I am not a geologist.
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Good thing.
Re:probably wasn't a beach... (Score:5, Informative)
Jurassic Shore (Score:2)
The fossils were from a sedimentary formation that was most likely a beach. They date back to 3.4 billion years ago and there is evidence that large amounts of water existed as far back as 4.4 billion years.
Does this suggest that beaches existed at least that old, and therefore, Jersey Shore is therefore explainable by evolution with its muscle bound, reptilian inhabitants?
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... has weeded out the pasty and the lightweights.
Hey now, I resemble that remark!
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"Study of zircons has found that liquid water must have existed as long ago as 4400 Ma, very soon after the formation of the Earth." [wikipedia.org]
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4.5 billion years ago, probably not. At least not for long, any water probably getting vaporized by gigantic collisions on a regular basis. But by 4.4 billion years ago, there is evidence for detrital (i.e. eroded on the surface and redeposited) zircon mineral grains in what are now highly metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. The original rocks did not survive unaltered from that period, but the recycled zircons did, implying there had to be some process to erode them from the rock in which they initially cr
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I may be wrong, but it was my impression that cool early earth theory today has a more substantial body of evidence than hot early earth (in particular, clear signs of plate tectonics during the period) - so shouldn't it be considered a default theory these days?
Errata (Score:4, Informative)
They are fossils OF a beach, not fossils ON a beach -- More specifically what appear to be fossil remains of microbes that lived in beach sand.
Nitpicking (Score:2)
Maybe you meant they are fossils of an organism living IN a beach? I guess it was too small to be ON it anyhow.
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More specifically what appear to be fossil remains of microbes that lived in beach sand.
Like Jersey Shore?
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I'm possibly the only living entity in North America who doesn't have the slightest idea what Jersey Shore is (other than a town in central Pennsylvania a few kilometers South of Williamsport.) I hope to keep it that way.
Mars has lots of sulfur (Score:3)
If Mars has a biology, it may involve sulfur a lot more than the Earth's does, so this is very interesting from the standpoint of seeding life between the two planets [slashdot.org].
Re:Mars has lots of sulfur (Score:4, Interesting)
If Mars has a biology, it may involve sulfur a lot more than the Earth's does, so this is very interesting from the standpoint of seeding life between the two planets [slashdot.org].
Or it just might be that hot sulfur conditions might be a good way to start life rolling [wikipedia.org]. Convergent evolution.
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Or it just might be that hot sulfur conditions might be a good way to start life rolling
Just like carbon compounds are good catalysts for silicon-based life.
Remnants of some Aliens' lunch (Score:2)
ET was here billions of years ago and didn't bother cleaning up after his picnic. Or it could be his athletes foot fungus.
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That would explain the large orange goo in Alaska recently!
Rick Perry says... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Rick Perry says... (Score:4, Funny)
He cannot make Australia an imaginary island as his friend and propaganda minister Rupert Murdoch was born there. However, he could move to Mesopotamia and be closer to paradise. At least god made every thing just there 6000 years ago. Sulfur eating lifeforms are definitely from hell. Therefor the entrance to hell must be somewhere in Australia. Wouldn't that be a superb plot for a new Hollywood series?
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Sulfur eating lifeforms are definitely from hell. Therefor the entrance to hell must be somewhere in Australia.
Love it!
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Sulfur eating lifeforms are definitely from hell. Therefor the entrance to hell must be somewhere in Australia. Wouldn't that be a superb plot for a new Hollywood series?
Buffy, the barbie slayer?
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And I think Mr. Murdoch may have actually been that fossil in question...
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It is, we call it Brisbane
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Yes, less scary than Bachmann IMHO. For just one example, Bachmann asserted that she would not vote to increase the debt ceiling regardless of any other concern (and she kept that promise). Keep in mind that raising the debt ceiling allows us to keep commitments we've *already* made, so she was essentially saying that it's OK for us to skip out on our bills. And yes, she's been defending her position by pointing to a bill she had introduced that was supposed to avoid default, but I haven't seen an indepe
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It does seem that stupid sells, in the Republican Primary anyway.
I wonder how this all shakes out. There have got to be some old-timey behind-the-scenes guys, like Cheney and that crowd, who are looking at 2012 right now as a real chance to re-take the White House, and these nut jobbers as the only thing likely to keep them out.... other than an actual economic recovery in the next 14 months. Given all those jobs that simply don't exist here anymore, and the state of Congress, I wouldn't put money on that.
O
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We can hope this is the end of the republican party. But I am not that optimistic. Even if it is, I doubt that it will result in a 1 party democrat system. There is division among the democrats between the conservatives and moderate progressives, that could form the basis of new and better parties.
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Yeah, figures in a ledger book are more important than ppl suffering. Except if you're at war!
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How is Obama worse? He is a really good republican president. I can see why the liberals hate him.
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How is Obama worse? He is a really good republican president. I can see why the liberals hate him.
I don't get this. It's like you don't know who Obama is, what he's done, what his beliefs are, who he appoints, or the political obstacles that, thankfully, have pummeled him into submission. Don't get me wrong. I don't oppose him merely because he's incompetent, liberal, arrogant and rude to the point of idiocy, or destructive to US interests, present and future. But primarily, I oppose Obama because he is one of the most dishonest presidents the US has ever had. I'd put him above Nixon since Obama has hid
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oh for a mod point.
Move them to the Athabasca oil fields (Score:2)
"Chemical analyses of the minerals near the cells suggest the microorganisms depended on sulfur for fuel"
If we find them alive, move them to Athabasca oil fields in Canada - http://vimeo.com/6547387 [vimeo.com]
And then... (Score:2)
...they got back on the cruise ship! Hey-oh!
It was later identified as only... (Score:3)
Paul Hogan.
G'day Mate!
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I would suggest that the sulfur that killed them, for if the sulfur was fuel then why did they die?
Things die. It's how it goes. Sulfur is a pretty common fuel amongst anaerobes. Pretty good substitute for oxygen, if you need some chemical energy gradient to suck your energy from. I'd have to look it up, as palaeobiology is not my forte, but at the time this fossils originate from, we should have been under pretty heavy anaerobic conditions, so sulfur looks like food in that context.
So THAT'S where.... (Score:2, Funny)
He was on vacation (Score:2)
Rubert Murdoch was vacation AND he was from Australia, what is the big deal?
Is this the same region (Score:3)
That they found stromatolites ? Previously thought to be the oldest fossils.. I remember seeing them on various Discovery/NatGeo shows (and probably the original Cosmos, and Attenborough documentaries.
Interesting geological find.... (Score:2)
I seem to remember that the tectonic plate in that region is about to begin a downward slope into the Pacific?
Do we know if the plate where Australia resides moves any slower or faster than others?