Article: Discovery Provides Key Evidence Of Life's Beginnings

Discovery Provides Key Evidence Of Life's Beginnings
Science Daily - Researchers from Saint Louis University (SLU) and Peking
University in China are revealing for the first time the findings of a
discovery that could change the way we think about the development of life
on Earth.

Two years ago, Timothy Kusky, Ph.D., the Paul C. Reinert Professor of
Natural Sciences at SLU, and Jianghai Li, a professor of geological science
at Peking University, dug up hundreds of fossilized black smoker chimneys in
northern China.

Since then, the researchers have been analyzing the samples in several
laboratories. The discovery is important, the researchers say, because it
lends support to the theory that life on the planet developed on the sea
floor.

Findings the discovery are being reported in the latest issue of Gondwana
Research, an international interdisciplinary journal published by Elsevier,
the world's leading publisher of science and health information. It is
featured as the journal's cover article.

Black smoker chimneys are deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Marine geologists and
biologists routinely explore the depths of the ocean in submersibles looking
for these chimneys. Scientists have discovered many new species of organisms
near active chimneys, including a creature so unusual that it was classified
in a phylum of its own.

Because they are home to the most primitive life forms on Earth, fossilized
chimneys offer important clues to origins of life on the planet, Kusky said.
However, bringing fossilized chimneys found on the ocean's floor to the
surface is difficult - they are fragile and easily crumble.

The SLU/Peking chimneys are 1.43 billion years old, the oldest such
discovery on record, with previous findings dating back about 500 million
years. They're also the largest, with the largest fragment measuring about 3
feet in length, while previous discoveries have been just a few inches long.

Kusky said the age and size of the chimneys will help scientists understand
the interaction between ancient hydrothermal processes and the development
of life on the sea floor in ways that were not possible before.

"This discovery offers scientists valuable on-land samples for geological
and geobiological research with implications for the origin and evolution of
early life on Earth," said Kusky, also director of Saint Louis University's
Center for Environmental Sciences.

M. Santosh, editor-in-chief of Gondwana Research and professor of geology at
Kochi University in Japan, said the paper represents a major advance in the
geological sciences and offers important insights for biologists,
oceanographers and other scientists.

During their months of testing and analysis, the team discovered a type of
ancient microbe that relied on metal sulfide for nourishment lining the
fringes of the chimneys.

It's the first known case where such microbes have been shown to have lived
within the ancient fossil chimneys.

"This discovery provides tantalizing suggestions that early life may have
developed and remained sheltered in deep-sea hydrothermal vents until
surface conditions became favorable for organisms to inhabit the land,"
Kusky said.

Source: Saint Louis University Medical Center
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070727184902.htm

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek


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