Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates
@article{Dodd2017EvidenceFE, title={Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates}, author={Matthew S Dodd and D. Papineau and T. Grenne and J. F. Slack and M. Rittner and F. Pirajno and J. O’Neil and C. S. Little}, journal={Nature}, year={2017}, volume={543}, pages={60-64} }
Although it is not known when or where life on Earth began, some of the earliest habitable environments may have been submarine-hydrothermal vents. Here we describe putative fossilized microorganisms that are at least 3,770 million and possibly 4,280 million years old in ferruginous sedimentary rocks, interpreted as seafloor-hydrothermal vent-related precipitates, from the Nuvvuagittuq belt in Quebec, Canada. These structures occur as micrometre-scale haematite tubes and filaments with… CONTINUE READING
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