New evidence suggests that life existed on Earth 300 million years earlier than previously thought. Researchers examined heavy minerals known as zircons, which formed from ancient molten rock. Zircons are durable and are capable of capturing samples of their local environment when they form. Dark specks contained in some of the zircons were studied with Raman spectroscopy, and the findings indicate that the specks could be the remnants of microorganisms from 4.1 billion years ago.
View the press release from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) at: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/life-on-earth-likely-started-at-least-4-1-billion-years-ago-much-earlier-than-scientists-had-thought.
The study, “Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon,” was published in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)