About 350 million years ago, only insects and plants are said to have dominated the land and that too for around 50 million years – there were no mammals there. They have evolved from the ocean life.
To bolster the origin of life at the bottom of the ocean, newfound 1.43 billion-year-old fossils have come to stay. Yes, geologists have spotted deep-sea microbes-fossils, which can eventually provide more evidence of life’s origin from the bottom of the ocean.
Though previously similar fossils have been identified, the recently found fossils were unearthed in the ancient black smoker chimneys in a Chinese mine and are 1 billion years older to any such fossils discovered yet.
Precisely revealing life in ‘extreme’ environment, the newly found fossils reveal that –
Black smoker chimneys develop at submerged openings in the Earth’s crust that spew out mineral-rich water as hot as 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). Bacteria that don’t depend on sunlight or oxygen move into the fragile chimneys that grow around the vents and feed on the dissolved minerals.
Nearly identical to the archaea- and bacteria-harboring structures that are found today on sea beds, the scientists considers these as remnants of the oldest living life forms-types on the planet.
But, unlike other previous evidences these new finds reveals life’s origin deep down in the darkness of the seas, near hydrothermal vents and not in shallow waters!
Though, this new ancient fossil-find may eventually kick up controversies on at what depth they actually developed in the seas, the hint that nothing conclusive evidence can be drawn have opened up new horizons of more research into the basic element of life – its origin.
Besides this, the chimney-find itself can provide experts with clues on how the ancient hydrothermal vent growth is linked to the development of life on the sea floor – a significant achievement in the both the geological and geo-biological fields.
