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The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes: 3.8 billion-year-old biogenic hematite in a banded iron formation of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada; [30] graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks in western Greenland; [31] and microbial mat fossils in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western Australia.
As for life on land, in 2019 scientists reported the discovery of a fossilized fungus, named Ourasphaira giraldae, in the Canadian Arctic, that may have grown on land a billion years ago, well before plants are thought to have been living on land. [100] [101] [102] The earliest life on land may have been bacteria 3.22 billion years ago. [103]
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
This suggests that an organism in of the phylum Thermotogota (formerly Thermotogae) [4] was the most recent common ancestor of modern bacteria. Further chemical and isotopic analysis of ancient rock reveals that by the Siderian period, roughly 2.45 billion years ago, [5] oxygen had appeared.
The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, [7] [8] [9] during the Eoarchean Era, after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean eon. There are microbial mat fossils such as stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.
The age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years. [1] [2] [3] The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates from at least 3.5 billion years ago. [4] [5] [6] Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life (covered instead by abiogenesis), but it does explain how early lifeforms evolved into the complex ecosystem that we see ...
[2] [3] It is estimated to have occurred between 3.5 and 2.4 billion years ago during the Archean eon, prior to the Great Oxygenation Event and Huronian glaciation. [ 4 ] Retinal-containing cell membranes exhibit a single light absorption peak centered in the energy-rich green-yellow region of the visible spectrum , but transmit and reflect red ...
c. 3,480 Ma – Fossils of microbial mat found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. [11] [12] First appearance of stromatolitic organisms that grow at interfaces between different types of material, mostly on submerged or moist surfaces. c. 3,460 Ma – Fossils of bacteria in chert.