It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Dr. Nutman said there was a “diminishing probability” that older fossils will ever be found. Rocks from this period are very rare. Those that survive have been cooked to such high heats by geological processes like mountain-forming that evidence of fossils and sedimentary layers is destroyed. Most of the Isua rocks have been cooked in this way.
If biological, the great age of the fossils complicates the task of reconstructing the evolution of life from the chemicals naturally present on the early Earth. It leaves comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred and puts the process close to a time when Earth was being bombarded by destructive asteroids.
If life on Earth did not begin until after the Late Heavy Bombardment, then it had a mere 100 million years in which to evolve to the quite advanced stage seen in the new fossils.
If so, Dr. Allwood wrote, then “life is not a fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing.” It will emerge whenever there’s an opportunity.
But the argument that life seems to have evolved very early and quickly, so therefore is inherently likely, can be turned around, Dr. Joyce said. “You could ask why, if life were such a probable event, we don’t have evidence of multiple origins,” he said.
originally posted by: Athetos
The first looks more distinct than the second but it looks high lighted. But at 1-4cm in size I wonder how they could have come into existence as its believed single cell prokaryotes came first then multicellular life. At that size is have my doubts but I am no expert by any means.
a reply to: PhotonEffect
originally posted by: Bigburgh
a reply to: PhotonEffect
So weired looking.. S&F.
It layers up while it does not. I'm going to put this in my Extreme'a'philes... file.
Thanks for sharing this.
This pushes life back into a time when the earth had orange skies and green oceans, and was still being bombarded by asteroids. It seems inconceivable that life could have begun in an environment like that, let alone thrive.
The ISB stromatolites grew in a shallow marine environment, as indicated by seawater-like rare-earth element plus yttrium trace element signatures of the metacarbonates, and by interlayered detrital sedimentary rocks with cross-lamination and storm-wave generated breccias... The presence of these stromatolites demonstrates the establishment of shallow marine carbonate production with biotic CO2 sequestration by 3,700 million years ago, near the start of Earth’s sedimentary record. A sophistication of life by 3,700 Ma is in accord with genetic molecular clock studies placing life’s origin in the Hadean eon (>4,000 million years ago).
It is why many believe this discovery will surely lead to heavy debate, due to the implications this can have on life origins and it's subsequent evolution.
The question then becomes if these are in fact microorganisms in those fossils, how long did it them take to evolve to that state?
Very few ancient stromatolites contain fossilized microbes. While features of some stromatolites are suggestive of biological activity, others possess features that are more consistent with abiotic (non-biological) precipitation. Finding reliable ways to distinguish between biologically formed and abiotic stromatolites is an active area of research in geology. Wikipedia
originally posted by: Astyanax
And it’s worth noting that
Very few ancient stromatolites contain fossilized microbes. While features of some stromatolites are suggestive of biological activity, others possess features that are more consistent with abiotic (non-biological) precipitation. Finding reliable ways to distinguish between biologically formed and abiotic stromatolites is an active area of research in geology. Wikipedia
originally posted by: Astyanax
I don’t expect to see any debate on it at all, except on the Creationist internet. We’ll see.
originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: PhotonEffect
the tendency of matter to self-organize at the expense of energy. An example of a fascinating postulate: the mass-energy cycle. But... does it exist?