Scientists Just Cracked 2-Billion-Year-Old Mystery

Scientists have cracked open a stone that’s over 2 billion years old, and in doing so, have cracked a longstanding mystery.

This is amazing.

At a glance:

  • Scientists discovered living microbes inside a 2-billion-year-old rock, the oldest example of living microorganisms ever found in ancient rock.
  • The discovery was made in South Africa’s Bushveld Igneous Complex through ultradeep drilling.
  • This breakthrough could help scientists better understand the evolution of early life on Earth and has significant implications for the search for life on other planets, particularly Mars.

In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have unearthed living microbes sealed inside a 2-billion-year-old stone, forcing a reevaluation of what we know about the evolution of life on Earth. According to a study published in Microbial Ecology, these ancient microorganisms are the oldest known living microbes found within rock, pushing back the boundaries of what was previously believed to be habitable environments for life.

The discovery was made by an international team of researchers who drilled deep into the Earth in South Africa’s Bushveld Igneous Complex. This finding is particularly striking because, until now, the oldest known example of microbes found in ancient rock came from a 100-million-year-old deposit beneath the ocean floor. Lead study author Yohey Suzuki, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, highlighted the significance of the discovery, noting that “we didn’t know if 2-billion-year-old rocks were habitable.”

The microbes appear to have evolved at an extraordinarily slow rate over the course of billions of years, providing scientists with a “time capsule” into the distant past of Earth’s biological history. This slow evolution could offer new insights into the genetic makeup of ancient life forms, potentially unraveling mysteries surrounding the early stages of life on our planet. Suzuki noted that studying the DNA and genomes of these ancient microbes could yield unprecedented understanding of life’s early evolution.

The implications of this discovery go beyond Earth, as it may serve as a precursor to future research into life on other planets. The study’s authors draw parallels between these findings and NASA’s ongoing Perseverance mission, which aims to retrieve samples from Mars. These ancient Martian specimens may be similar in age to the Earthly rock just discovered, making this a potential test run for future extraterrestrial research.

“Finding microbial life in samples from Earth from 2 billion years ago… makes me excited for what we might be able to now find in samples from Mars,” Suzuki said.

This discovery is a significant step forward in our understanding of ancient life and could have far-reaching consequences for astrobiology, especially as scientists continue to search for signs of life beyond Earth.

For the academics among us, here’s the full study.