Oldest fossils EVER found suggest life on Earth began more than 3 5 billion years ago

Oldest fossils EVER found suggest life on Earth began more than 3 5 billion years ago

HOW THE FINDINGS WERE MADE

The findings were made using a state of the art secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) - one of just a handful of such instruments in the world.

Using this, the team was able to separate the carbon composing each fossil into its constituent isotopes and measure their ratios.

Isotopes are different versions of the same chemical element that vary in their masses, due to a different number of neutrons in the nucleus of each atom.

Different organic substances, whether in rock, microbe or animal form, contain characteristic ratios of their stable carbon isotopes.

The team was able to tease apart the carbon-12 isotopes from the carbon-13 within each fossil and measure the ratio of the two compared to a known carbon isotope standard and a fossil-less section of the rock in which they were found.

Based on this information, the researchers were also able to assign identities and likely physiological behaviours to the fossils locked inside the rock.
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