Scientists have crushed a two-billion-year-old stone and discovered something completely unexpected

This could be huge.

Microbe rock

A very ancient rock – or rather what's inside it – may force scientists to rewrite what we know about the evolution of life on Earth.

As detailed in A New study Published in the magazine Microbial environmentScientists have discovered living microbes sealed inside a two-billion-year-old stone.

It is “the oldest example of living microbes inside ancient rocks discovered so far,” according to A press release.

“We didn’t know whether 2-billion-year-old rocks were habitable,” Yuhei Suzuki, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Science, said in a statement. “Until now, the oldest geological layer in which microorganisms have been found was 100 million-year-old sediments beneath the ocean floor, so this is a very exciting discovery.”

In a sense, the rock is a time machine. our Current scientific understanding Is that the oldest life on Earth appeared about 3.5 billion years ago. humans, In comparisonhas only been around for a few hundred thousand years or so.

As the researchers wrote in their study, the microbes that were confirmed to be home to the stone appear to have evolved Incredibly Slowly over time. This means further study of the newly discovered organismS Genetic makeup can reveal unprecedented insights.

“By studying the DNA and genomes of such microbes, we may be able to understand the evolution of very early life on Earth,” Suzuki said.

Inward, then outward

The ancient stone was discovered in the Bushvelt Igneous Complex in South Africa by deep drilling.

The International Alliance of Scientists believes that further study of the rock microbial community could have implications for ongoing research into life on Earth. last Planets as well.

A Main goal NASA's Perseverance mission is to retrieve physical samples from Mars. As the study authors note, these samples are likely to be of a similar age to the just-opened Earth stone, making this discovery more of a test run for interplanetary microbiology.

“Finding microbial life in samples from Earth two billion years ago and being able to accurately confirm its authenticity makes me excited about what we may now be able to find in samples from Mars,” Suzuki said in a statement.

More about the amazing things inside the rocks: Microplastics found in sediment layers untouched by modern humans