New York, August 22 (ANI): Scientists in Australia have discovered fossils, which they believe is the oldest evidence of life on earth.
The fossils were found in sandstone at the base of the Strelley Pool rock formation in Western Australia.
The sandstone, 3.4 billion years ago, was a beach on one of the few islands that had started to appear above the ocean's surface.
Examining thin slices of rock under the microscope, they have found structures that look like living cells, some in clusters that seem to show cell division.
The geologists have gathered considerable circumstantial evidence that the structures they see are biological.
With an advanced new technique, they have analyzed the composition of very small spots within the cell-like structures.
"We can see carbon, sulphur, nitrogen and phosphorus, all within the cell walls," said Martin D. Brasier of the University of Oxford.
Crystals of fool's gold, an iron-sulphur mineral, lie next to the microfossils and indicate that the organisms, in the absence of oxygen, fed off sulphur compounds, Dr. Brasier and his colleagues say.
"The new evidence from our research points to earliest life being sulphur-based, living off and metabolising compounds containing sulphur rather than oxygen for energy and growth," said lead researcher David Wacey of the University of Western Australia.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience. (ANI)
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