The oldest fossils ever found are "direct evidence" of life on Earth 3.8 to 4.3 billion years ago when our planet was still in its infancy, researchers reported Wednesday. Even at the lower end of the spectrum, "the microfossils we discovered are about 300 million years older" than any runners-up, said Dominic Papineau, a professor at University College London who made the discovery. The dating puts the fossils "within a few hundred million years of the accretion of the solar system," he said in a video statement.
The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. The fact that life kick-started not long after Earth formed suggests it could also emerge on watery worlds outside our Solar System at comparable stages of formation, the scientists said. "If life happened so quickly on Earth, then could we expect it to be a simple process that could start on other planets?", asked lead author Matthew Dodd, a graduate student at the London Centre for Nanotechnology. Earth and Mars had liquid water on their surfaces at the same time, he noted.
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