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World's Oldest Fossils Found On Australian Beach
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."
That was careless. You'd think people would pay more attention to their fossils.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Those "Life's a Beach" bumper stickers at least
Just some old retirees who've pruned up with too much sun.
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. 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.
I am not a geologist.
Good thing.
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.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
ET was here billions of years ago and didn't bother cleaning up after his picnic. Or it could be his athletes foot fungus.
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.
Maybe you meant they are fossils of an organism living IN a beach? I guess it was too small to be ON it anyhow.
"Yet another indication of the lying liberal media trying to desecrate our young childrens minds with scientific theory". He then went on to submit emergency legislation to designate Australia as imaginary, all fossils (now and to be discovered) as fake and scientists as the devil incarnate. After this his poll ratings climb 5 points in South Carolina.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
"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
"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."
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?
I8-D
...especially in the presence of the ancient dried form of the life form Cannabis.
I8-D
...they got back on the cruise ship! Hey-oh!
Paul Hogan.
G'day Mate!
...Bob Dole retired to. I was wondering why I hadn't seen him in a while.
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.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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 crystallized and redeposit them, likely water. Refer to this web page and this paper. They're kind of technical, so good luck if you don't have some familiarity with geology and isotope geochemistry, but if you google "cool early Earth hypothesis", you'll find more general accounts from media reports too. It's fair to say that these interpretations are relatively new and thus tentative, but if they are correct it would mean the Earth wasn't the completely lava-covered hell that most geologists used to think it was when they named the pre-4-billion-year period of its history the Hadean Era. So, you have the right idea and it's a legitimate question to wonder whether there was water so early, but the science has changed in recent years.
By 3.4 billion years (the estimated age of these new fossils), there's plenty of unambiguous evidence for oceans having been around for quite a while before.
Rubert Murdoch was vacation AND he was from Australia, what is the big deal?
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?
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.
So Eden, then?
You have VERY clearly never been to Port Hedland.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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?
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...