Evolution: life below ground (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, July 24, 2023, 17:33 (278 days ago) @ David Turell

A new massive discovery 1.5 billion years old:

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discovery-oldest-3d-preserved-microorganisms.html

"Researchers from Technische Universität Berlin, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Museum of Natural History Berlin and the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg have discovered the oldest, three-dimensionally preserved microfossils on Earth to date on minerals from the Volyn quartz mine near the city of Zhytomyr (Ukraine).

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"The finds are the first fossilized microorganisms dating back to what is referred to as the "boring billion," the first seemingly uneventful billion years before the Precambrian Revolution. "Only then, about 600 million years ago, did evolution produce skeletons made of calcium carbonate or phosphate; invertebrates such as clams, corals or snails emerged, and then vertebrates with backbones. Real fossils with preservable skeletons only became possible as a result of this biomineralization."

"Because living organisms had no skeletons more than 600 million years ago, they could not actually preserve their form—which is why very little is known about this period. It was mainly only in sedimentary rocks, i.e., former deposits on sea floors, that carbon remains of the microorganisms were preserved, which were then destroyed by millions of years of mechanical deformation. And it is only because life forms prefer the lighter carbon isotope 12C to the heavier variant 13C that it has been possible to speculate at all that this was once biological material.

"It is only recently that researchers found for the first time biological compounds such as cholesterol in rocks in Australia, that are 1.5 billion years old and that directly suggest primordial life forms. In other rocks, the early microorganisms have left only faint imprints, from which it is difficult to discern their form.

"'What we are looking at now under our electron microscope are mostly fibrous structures. Either thin filaments that branch out, or thick ones that have small protrusions or dents," Franz explains. The thickness of the objects varies between 10 and 200 micrometers and their length is up to several millimeters, sometimes with a thin channel in the middle.

"This means these primordial microorganisms can also be seen with the naked eye. What is particularly exciting is that the researchers also found a few previously unknown forms of microorganisms. These had shell or spherical-shaped structures or tentacle-like branches.

"'By analyzing the carbon isotopes 12C and 13C, we have also been able to prove that our finds must once have been living creatures," Franz explains. The age of the finds was measured using a special isotope method, which resulted in a minimum age for the fossils of 1.5 billion years. The researchers also detected the substance chitosan in certain filamentous objects using infrared spectroscopy, as well as the elements bismuth and tellurium using an electron microscope.

"'This all points to a fungus-like organism," Franz says. However, that would only apply to some of the finds, he adds. "From the other fossilized microorganisms, we can at least assume that they must have been single or multicellular organisms with distinct cell structures." These probably lived with the fungi in a common ecosystem.

"The location of the fossilized primordial microorganisms on granite rock in a quartz mine suggests both their way of life and the reasons for their exceptionally good state of preservation. "Even today, microorganisms live up to three kilometers deep in the Earth's crust," Franz explains. They live there—without sunlight—on substances such as phosphorus, nitrogen or carbon dioxide, some of which are dissolved in water and migrate downward from above through fissures and crevices or are already present there.

"The microorganisms obtain the energy they need for their metabolism from chemical processes on minerals. In the granite caverns of the Volyn quartz mine, such colonies of microorganisms were apparently already present near the Earth's surface 1.5 billion years ago."

Comment: since life is thought to be 3.6 billion years old, these fossils fill a gap in time. We have much evidence of subterranean life present today, so these organisms are not surprising. Look at the pictured animals.