Tiny bacteria-like creatures found their home in hardened lava 3.5 billion years ago
Tiny bacteria-like creatures found their home in hardened lava 3.5 billion years ago. This is what scientists reported last Friday.
These creatures, known as archaea, burrowed into the volcanic rock and formed long tubes. A team of researchers from the USA, Norway, Canada and South Africa found evidence of Archaea in a 3.5 billion year old rock in South Africa.
"Our evidence is among the oldest evidence of life yet found," said Hubert Staudigel, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
In last Friday's issue of the journal Science, Stodigal and his colleagues reported that they had found tell-tale tubes
Lava fields in the Barbatron Greenstone Belt in South Africa, which formed under water on the ocean shelf but are now on land. The area of the continental shelf is a favorite place for life to start, Stodigal said. "It offers easy access to sea water and a volcanic environment such as the hydrothermal systems in the deep sea - including a wide variety of catalysts that were needed for the beginning of life.
So far, no undisputed remains of the very first life have been found. The main problem is that most of these ancient rocks underwent geological processes of heating, pressure and folding that could destroy any evidence that was in them.
In 1996, researchers found rocks in Greenland dated to be 3.85 billion years old that contained what could be interpreted as traces of bacteria. In 1999, a team researches the remains of 2.7 billion year old algae in a shale in Australia. In a report from Friday, the researchers said they found carbon inside these tubes that may represent organic material left after the bacteria decomposed. "At that time, there were no plants or animals that could be eaten." said Studeagle. "Therefore, in order to live, the bacteria have adapted to eat volcanic rocks. That's all there was."
Archaea still exist. They make up many of what are called extremophiles - creatures found in extreme environments such as underwater springs, sulfur springs and Antarctica.
