Re: Article: Discovery Provides Key Evidence Of Life's Beginnings


"Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:f90fni$1t3j$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.

[snip]
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.

Neat, but at 1.43 billion years I don't see that it tells us anything about
where life first developed on this planet.

[snip]

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.

Ok, now my "willing suspension of disbelief" just went out the window. How
could they possibly infer anything about the nutritional requirements of
the things? All they have is morphology and location. They can't possibly
have any DNA, at that age.


.

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