These eyelash-sized bits of minerals found in rock from northern Quebec may be the oldest traces of life ever found. The tubes of hematite are 4.28 billion years old, beating out 3.7 billion year old microbial remains found in Greenland. Nadia Drake tells the story at National Geographic:
The microfossils also lend support to the idea that the warm, watery, mineral-rich neighborhoods around submerged vents are prime places for life to emerge, whether on this planet, on the seafloors of icy moons, or elsewhere in the universe….
"If indeed their analyses and interpretations are correct, then life arose rapidly on Earth, soon after the planet itself began to stabilize," says astrobiologist Kevin Hand of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "As the froth of geology began to cool, biology established its role as a planetary process."
But while the fossils are clad in iron, they might not be iron-clad evidence of ancient life. Some scientists doubt that they are the remains of microbes at all. Others note that the age of the crystals cradling the potential microfossils is controversial, and the structures may be more than a billion years younger than reported.
"This May Be the Oldest Known Sign of Life on Earth" by Nadia Drake (Nat Geo)
