According to The Huffington Post, fossilized, single-celled organisms were discovered in Australia. The organisms are thought to be 3.4 billion years old, making them the oldest fossilized organisms on Earth.
That’s not the only impressive thing about the fossils; the fossils probably lived during early Earth’s oxygen-free environment, using compounds rich in sulfur to sustain themselves.
For scientists, this means that their search for sulfur-consuming organisms on Mars is more likely. An astrobiologist told the IB times, “I mean, wow, we now know that sulfur-based metabolism happened very early on Earth. And early Mars had water and sulfur. It shared in many ways the environment of the early Earth.
You can learn more about the discovery in this video, which is embedded below this post.
So, now that scientists have made this discovery, what does that mean for people who believe in life on other planets? I think that at the very least, we can suspect that single-celled organisms could probably survive on planets; not all organisms need oxygen to survive, as we have already seen with these organisms found on Earth.
What do you think about the discovery? Do you think scientists will find the organisms they are suspecting exist on Mars? Sound off below.
Oxygen free? In an oxygen free world, and especially at oceanic pHs, elemental sulfur is unstable and is reduced abiologically (no organisms necessary). Without oxygen the sulfates necessary for biological sulfate-reduction to form pyrite (“fool’s gold”) would be unavailable. So, if, in fact, if sulfates are necessary to explain the isotopic data it would appear that free oxygen WAS present and Cyanobacteria were extant at that time. This is consistent with Bill Schopf’s earlier findings from the Apex Chert.