Oldest Fossils On Earth Discovered

[Tank]

Oldest Fossils On Earth Discovered

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2011) — Earth's oldest fossils have been found in Australia by a team from the University of Western Australia and Oxford University. The microscopic fossils show convincing evidence for cells and bacteria living in an oxygen-free world over 3.4 billion years ago...

...Significantly, there was very little oxygen present as there were no plants or algae yet to photosynthesise and produce oxygen. The new evidence points to early life being sulfur-based, living off and metabolizing compounds containing sulfur rather than oxygen for energy and growth...

...Should there be life elsewhere in our solar system -- on Mars or on the moons of Titan or Europa -- it is likely to be similar sorts of bacteria and cells living in similar environments. So any fossils in rocks from these planets and moons ought to look like these Australian microfossils and pass the same evidence tests...

Fascinating discoveries and fascinating research.

[Recusant]

This is a cool find, though as someone elsewhere pointed out, there is practically no chance that the organisms were "sulfur-based." They, like all life on earth that we are aware of, were very likely to actually have been carbon-based.  I think that a more accurate way of describing them would be to say that they were probably "sulfur-reducing" organisms.

Thanks for the link, Tank. 

[Asmodean]

...Sulfur. Interesting. I was semi-expecting silicium, but that's next 

[Sweetdeath]

Woo! Nice~
Take that, Young Earth losers.

Thanks for another awesome link, Tank.