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33. Friedman, I. & O’Neil, J. R. Compilation of stable isotope fractionation factors of geochemical interest, Chapter KK. Data of Geochemistry. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 440-KK (1977)</s>Scientists have found what they think is the oldest fossil on Earth, a remnant of life from 3.7 billion years ago when Earth's skies were orange and its oceans green.

In a newly melted part of Greenland, Australian scientists found the leftover structure from a community of microbes that lived on an ancient seafloor, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature .

The discovery shows life may have formed quicker and easier than once thought, about half a billion years after Earth formed . And that may also give hope for life forming elsewhere, such as Mars, said study co-author Martin VanKranendonk of the University of New South Wales and director of the Australian Center for Astrobiology.

"It gives us an idea how our planet evolved and how life gained a foothold," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists had thought it would take at least half a billion years for life to form after the molten Earth started to cool a bit, but this shows it could have happened quicker, he said. That's because the newly found fossil is far too complex to have developed soon after the planet's first life forms, he said.

In an outcrop of rocks that used to be covered with ice and snow which melted after an exceptionally warm spring, the Australian team found stromatolites, which are intricately layered microscopic layered structures that are often produced by a community of microbes. The stromatolites were about .4 to 1.6 inches high (1 to 4 centimeters).

It "is like the house left behind made by the microbes," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists used the layers of ash from volcanoes and tiny zircon with uranium and lead to date this back 3.7 billion years ago, using a standard dating method, VanKranendonk said.

"It would have been a very different world. It would have had black continents, a green ocean with orange skies," he said. The land was likely black because the cooling lava had no plants, while large amounts of iron made the oceans green. Because the atmosphere had very little oxygen and oxygen is what makes the sky blue, its predominant color would have been orange, he said.

The dating seems about right, said Abigail Allwood , a NASA astrobiologist who found the previous oldest fossil, from 3.48 billion years ago, in Australia. But Allwood said she is not completely convinced that what VanKranendonk's team found once was alive. She said the evidence wasn't conclusive enough that it was life and not a geologic quirk.

"It would be nice to have more evidence, but in these rocks that's a lot to ask," Allwood said in an email.

Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears and his work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/seth-borenstein

In this photo provided by Allen Nutman, a rock with the stromatolites, tiny layered structures from 3.7 billion years ago that are remnants from a community of microbes that used to be live there. Scientists have found what they think is the oldest fossil on Earth, a remnant of life from 3.7 billion years ago when Earth¿s skies were orange and its oceans green. In a newly melted part of Greenland, Australian scientists found the leftover structure from a community of microbes that lived on an ancient seafloor, according to a study in Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016 journal Nature. (Allen Nutman/University of Wollongong via AP)</s>Scientists have found what they think is the oldest fossil on Earth, a remnant of life from 3.7 billion years ago when Earth's skies were orange and its oceans green.

In a newly melted part of Greenland, Australian scientists found the leftover structure from a community of microbes that lived on an ancient seafloor, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature .

The discovery shows life may have formed quicker and easier than once thought, about half a billion years after Earth formed. And that may also give hope for life forming elsewhere, such as Mars, said study co-author Martin VanKranendonk of the University of New South Wales and director of the Australian Center for Astrobiology.

"It gives us an idea how our planet evolved and how life gained a foothold," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists had thought it would take at least half a billion years for life to form after the molten Earth started to cool a bit, but this shows it could have happened quicker, he said. That's because the newly found fossil is far too complex to have developed soon after the planet's first life forms, he said.

In an outcrop of rocks that used to be covered with ice and snow which melted after an exceptionally warm spring, the Australian team found stromatolites, which are intricately layered microscopic layered structures that are often produced by a community of microbes. The stromatolites were about .4 to 1.6 inches high (1 to 4 centimeters).

It "is like the house left behind made by the microbes," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists used the layers of ash from volcanoes and tiny zircon with uranium and lead to date this back 3.7 billion years ago, using a standard dating method, VanKranendonk said.

"It would have been a very different world. It would have had black continents, a green ocean with orange skies," he said. The land was likely black because the cooling lava had no plants, while large amounts of iron made the oceans green. Because the atmosphere had very little oxygen and oxygen is what makes the sky blue, its predominant color would have been orange, he said.

The dating seems about right, said Abigail Allwood, a NASA astrobiologist who found the previous oldest fossil, from 3.48 billion years ago, in Australia. But Allwood said she is not completely convinced that what VanKranendonk's team found once was alive. She said the evidence wasn't conclusive enough that it was life and not a geologic quirk.

"It would be nice to have more evidence, but in these rocks that's a lot to ask," Allwood said in an email.</s>A rock with stromatolites, tiny layered structures that are remnants of a community of ancient microbes.

Life on Earth is even older than we thought, Australian scientists said on Thursday as they unveiled fossils dating back a staggering 3.7 billion years.

Life on Earth is even older than we thought, Australian scientists said on Thursday as they unveiled fossils dating back a staggering 3.7 billion years.

The tiny structures — called stromatolites — were found in ancient rock along the edge of Greenland’s ice cap, and were 220 million years older than the previous record holders.

They show that life emerged fairly shortly — in geological terms — after Earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, said lead researcher Allen Nutman of the University of Wollongong.

And, he added, they offer hope that very basic life may at one point have existed on Mars.

“This discovery represents a new benchmark for the oldest preserved evidence of life on Earth,” Professor Martin Julian Van Kranendonk, a geology expert at the University of New South Wales and study co-author, said in a statement.

The structure and geochemistry of the rock in which they were found provided clues to a biological origin for the microfossils, he said, which in turn “points to a rapid emergence of life on Earth”.

The one-to-four centimetre high Isua stromatolites were exposed after the melting of a snow patch in the Isua Greenstone Belt of Greenland.

Stromatolites are formed when microorganisms, such as certain kinds of bacteria, trap bits of sediment together in layers. These layers build up over time to create solid rock.

These rocks themselves were never alive, but their existence suggest that the very simple single-cell organisms that made them were present on Earth hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought, said the team.

Another scientist was more skeptical. Structures that look just like stromatolites can form without the presence of any living organism, Abigail Allwood of the California Institute of Technology wrote in a comment on the study. “The interpretation of stromatolite-like structures has been notoriously difficult in Earth’s oldest rocks,” she wrote, and predicted the study findings would “spark controversy”.

The new findings were published in the journal Nature. — AFP</s>At a time when our planet was still being pummeled by asteroids, it seems some of the first life on Earth found shelter beneath the lapping waves of a shallow sea.

A series of small conical structures discovered in a recently exposed piece of rock in Greenland have been shown to be the oldest fossil of a living organism on Earth.

The tiny shapes preserved in the sedimentary rock for 3.7 billion years were created by prehistoric bacteria and reveal new clues about how life emerged on our planet.

Stromatolites are layered structures that form in shallow water due to grains of sand and mud being bound together by microorganisms. They provide some of the earliest evidence for life on the planet but can still be found in some locations today. Microbial mats in the early Earth are thought to have created these structures in shallow oceans. However, similar structures can form without biological action as minerals are deposited by water. The type of minerals in the stromatolite and the chemical finger print, can provide clues as to how they formed. According to the fossil record stromatolites are thought to have reached their peak around 1.25 billion years ago and began to decline. By the start of the Cambrian they had fallen to 20 per cent of their abundance. It is thought the evolution of grazing sea creatures could have contributed to their decline. They are now only rarely found in specific locations around the world.

The structures, known as stromatolites, suggest even at this early and tumultuous stage in our planet's history, complex life was already thriving.

Gelogists discovered them embedded in the rock of an outcrop that recently emerged from the ice in Isua, near Nuuk on the southwest coast of Greenland.

Colonies of microbes living in an ancient ocean formed the structures by shaping the sediment around them and gluing it together.

They predate the previous oldest known evidence for life – a series of stromatolites found in Pilbara Craton, Australia – by more than 220 million years.

It suggests that life emerged rapidly on Earth fairly early in our planet's history.

Scientists have long puzzled over whether life fizzled into existence over an extended period of time as it waited for the right conditions to emerge as Earth evolved.

Some have suggested that life was actually kickstarted fairly early in the planet's history and since then played a key role in helping to shape the world.

According to Professor Allen Nutman, a geologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and his team who discovered the new fossil, it may have been the latter.

Writing in the journal Nature, they said: 'The recognition of 3,700 million-years-old biogenic stromatolites within Isua dolomites indicates that near the start of the preserved sedimentary record, atmospheric CO2 was being sequestered by biological activity.

'The complexity and setting of the Isua stromatolites points to sophistication in life systems at 3,700 million years ago, similar to that displayed by 3,480–3,400 million-years-old Pilbara stromatolites.

'This implies that by 3,700 million years ago life already had a considerable prehistory.'

Previous research using genetic studies have estimated the origins of life at more than four billion years ago.

This suggests that in around 300 million years, relatively sophisticated microbial communities had emerged from this early primordial soup.

As these evolved and led to increases in oxygen in the atmosphere, the evolution of organisms accelerated.

Stromatolites can still be found today in some shallow coastal and volcanic regions as grains of sand and mud are bound together by microbial mats of bacteria.

The stromatolites discovered in the metacarbonate rocks from Isua measure between 0.4 inches to 1.5 inches high (1-4cm).

However, stromatolites are often seen as controversial evidence for microbial life as similar structures can also form through purely chemical and geological processes.

Professor Nutman and his colleagues used several lines of evidence to show that the ones they found in Greenland were formed by living organisms.

They showed that chemical signatures in the rock suggest they were formed in a shallow marine environment by microbial activity.

The steep sided walls of the stromatolites also suggest they were formed by living organisms while layers within the structures indicate they were not formed by physical processes.

The presence of low-temperature dolomite in the structures also required microbial activity to form.

Writing in an accompanying article in Nature, Dr Abigail Allwood, an earth scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said the findings could have wide reaching implications for whether life may have formed on other planets.

She said: 'Earth's surface 3.7 billion years ago was a tumultuous place, bombarded by asteroids and still in its formative stages.

'If life could find a foothold here, and leave such an imprint that vestiges exist even though only a minuscule sliver of metamorphic rock is all that remains from that time, then life is not a fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing.

'Give life half an opportunity and it'll run with it. Suddenly, Mars may look even more promising than before as a potential abode for past life.

'A plethora of Mars missions has shown that around the time that the Isua rocks were forming, Mars did not look too different from Earth from a habitability perspective, with standing bodies of water at the surface.'</s>SYDNEY: Life on Earth is even older than we thought, Australian scientists said Thursday as they unveiled fossils dating back a staggering 3.7 billion years.

The tiny structures—called stromatolites—were found along the edge of Greenland’s ice cap, and were 220 million years older than the previous record holders.

They prove that life emerged fairly shortly—in geological terms—after the Earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, said lead researcher Allen Nutman of the University of Wollongong.

And, he added, they offer hope that very basic life might at one point have existed on Mars.

“This discovery represents a new benchmark for the oldest preserved evidence of life on Earth,” Professor Martin Julian Van Kranendonk, a geology expert at the University of New South Wales and one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement.

“The structures and geochemistry from the newly exposed outcrops in Greenland display all of the features used in younger rocks to argue for a biological origin. It points to a rapid emergence of life on Earth.”

The one-to-four centimeter (0.4-1.6 inch) high Isua stromatolites—exposed after the melting of a snow patch in the Isua Greenstone Belt—matched other biological evidence on the evolution of the genetic code that placed the origins of life in a similar period, Nutman said.

Stromatolites are formed when microorganisms, such as certain kinds of bacteria, trap bits of sediment together in layers.

These layers build up over time to create solid rocks.

The rocks themselves were never alive, but their existence shows the very simple single-cell organisms that made them were present on Earth hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought.

Vickie Bennett from the Australian National University, who also worked on the study, said the research provided a new perspective on Earth’s history and “turns the study of planetary habitability on its head”.

“Rather than speculating about potential early environments, for the first time we have rocks that we know record the conditions and environments that sustained early life,” she said.

The discovery could help the hunt for life on Mars, considered the most likely location for microbial life-forms among other planets in the Solar System.

The Red Planet is believed to have once run with water and had an atmosphere, which together with warmth, could provide the right conditions for bacterial life.

“The significance for Mars is that 3,700 million years ago, Mars was probably still wet and probably still had oceans and so on, so if life develops so quickly on Earth to be able to form things like stromatolites—it might be more easy to detect signs of life on Mars,” Nutman told Agence France-Presse.

“Instead of looking at just the chemical signature, we might be able to see things like stromatolites in images (from Mars) sent back to Earth.”

The earliest evidence of life on Earth ahead of the Greenland discovery was made in 2006 when Australian and Canadian researchers dated microfossils in rocks from Pilbara’s Strelley Pool Chert formation at more than 3.4 billion years old.

Nutman, who has carried out research in remote Greenland where the stromatolites were discovered for more than three decades, said the site was known to be home to some of the world’s oldest rocks.

“Importantly, they are locally well-enough preserved and they haven’t been too deformed… so you can still see some of the original features,” he said.

The findings are published in the journal Nature. AFP</s>Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest fossils — about 3.7 billion years old — which pushes back the previous record by 220 million years and captures the earliest history of our planet.

Led by the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Professor Allen Nutman, the team discovered 3.7-billion-year-old stromatolite fossils in the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks, in the Isua Greenstone Belt along the edge of Greenland’s icecap.

The discovery of the Isua stromatolite fossils provides a greater understanding of early diversity of life on Earth which researchers say could have implications for our understanding of life on Mars.

Prof. Nutman said the fossils predated the world’s previous oldest stromatolite fossils — which were found in Western Australia — by 220 million years.

The discovery pushes back the fossil record to near the start of Earth’s geological record and points to evidence of life on Earth very early in its history.

The Isua stromatolites, which were exposed by the recent melting of a perennial snow patch, were laid down in shallow sea, providing the first evidence of an environment in which early life thrived.

For much of Earth’s history, life was just single cells, and stromatolite fossils are mounds of carbonate constructed by these communities of microbes.

“The significance of stromatolites is that not only do they provide obvious evidence of ancient life that is visible with the naked eye, but that they are complex ecosystems,” Prof. Nutman said.

“This indicates that as long as 3.7 billion years ago microbial life was already diverse,” he said.

“This diversity shows that life emerged within the first few hundred millions years of Earth’s existence, which is in keeping with biologists’ calculations showing the great antiquity of life’s genetic code,” he added.

Associate Professor Vickie Bennett, from Australian National University (ANU), said this study provided a new perspective into the history of Earth.

“Rather than speculating about potential early environments, for the first time we have rocks that we know record the conditions and environments that sustained early life,” said Prof. Bennett.

“Our research will provide new insights into chemical cycles and rock—water—microbe interactions on a young planet,” she said.

Martin Van Kranendonk, from University of New South Wales (UNSW), said it was a groundbreaking find that could point to similar life structures on Mars, which 3.7 billion years ago was a damp environment.

“This discovery represents a new benchmark for the oldest preserved evidence of life on Earth. It points to a rapid emergence of life on Earth and supports the search for life in similarly ancient rocks on Mars,” Van Kranendonk said.

The study was published in the journal Nature.</s>Oldest fossils found in Greenland, from time Earth was like Mars

OSLO, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The earliest fossil evidence of life on Earth has been found in rocks 3.7 billion years old in Greenland, raising chances of life on Mars aeons ago when both planets were similarly desolate, scientists said on Wednesday.

The experts found tiny humps, between one and 4 cm (0.4 and 1.6 inches) tall, in rocks at Isua in south-west Greenland that they said were fossilised groups of microbes similar to ones now found in seas from Bermuda to Australia.

If confirmed as fossilised communities of bacteria known as stromatolites - rather than a freak natural formation - the lumps would pre-date fossils found in Australia as the earliest evidence of life on Earth by 220 million years.

"This indicates the Earth was no longer some sort of hell 3.7 billion years ago," lead author Allen Nutman, of the University of Wollongong, told Reuters of the findings that were published in the journal Nature.

"It was a place where life could flourish."

Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago and the relative sophistication of stromatolites indicated that life had evolved quickly after a bombardment by asteroids ended about 4 billion years ago.

"Stromatolites contain billions of bacteria ... they're making the equivalent of apartment complexes," said Martin Van Kranendonk, a co-author at the University of New South Wales who identified the previously oldest fossils, dating from 3.48 billion years ago.

At the time stromatolites started growing in gooey masses on a forgotten seabed, the Earth was probably similar to Mars with liquid water at the surface, orbiting a sun that was 30 percent dimmer than today, the scientists said.

Those parallels could be a new spur to study whether Mars once had life, the authors said.

"Suddenly, Mars may look even more promising than before as a potential abode for past life," Abigail Allwood, of the California Institute of Technology, wrote in a commentary in Nature.

The Greenland find was made after a retreat of snow and ice exposed long-hidden rocks. Greenland's government hopes that a thaw linked to global warming will have positive spin-offs, such as exposing more minerals.

Nutman said the main controversy was likely to be that the fossils were in metamorphic rocks, reckoned to have formed under huge stress with temperatures up to 550 degrees Celsius (1,022°F) - usually too high to preserve any trace of life.

Still, Van Kranendonk told Reuters that dried-out biological material could sometimes survive such a baking, adding he was "absolutely convinced" by the Greenland fossils. (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
The oldest fossil (stromatolite) that had life is discovered in the melting snow at the Isua Greenstone Belt of Greenland.