The oldest fossils on Earth? New discoveries may well be rocks

Scientists Vickie Bennett, Allen Nutman and Clark Friend examine rocks in Greenland in this July 2012 archival photo. A new study indicates that what has been touted as the oldest fossil on Earth may well be made up of rocks . (Laure Gauthiez / Australian National University via AP)

WASHINGTON – According to a new study, what has been touted as the oldest fossil on Earth might just be a few rocks.

Two years ago, a team of Australian scientists discovered strange structures in Greenland that, in their opinion, were partly remnants of microbes living on an ancient seabed. It is said that they are 3.7 billion years old, which suggests that life is formed faster and more easily than expected after the Earth.

But on Wednesday, Nature magazine, which released the 2016 study, released a new study using NASA technology that concludes that the structures found on the rocks were probably not fossils, but more Rock. Australian scientists, however, still maintain that they are.

The new study was conducted by NASA astrobiologist Abigail Allwood, who had discovered the oldest fossil before, dating back nearly 3.5 billion years. When she read the 2016 paper, she said "there was something wrong," so she went to Greenland and looked at it.

Allwood discovered that the forms, the bad weather and especially the inner layers of the structures did not correspond to this type of fossil called stromatolites. One of them was pushing even in what she called the wrong direction.

Next, Allwood used a version of an instrument sent to Mars in a few years to create a chemical map of the structure. She said she did not have the chemical signature of fossilized life.

Three outside experts told The Associated Press that they agreed with the latest research. no one thought that it was about fossils, as Allen Nutman had suggested at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

The affirmation of such an old fossil requires several sources of data. "The scientists were therefore impressed but not convinced by Nutman's work," said Pieter Visscher of the University of Connecticut. He said Allwood's painstaking work persuaded him that it was not a fossil.

Nutman and his colleagues issued a statement in which they defended their work. They stated that Mr. Allwood took samples from one of the two sites and did not test the original samples when offered.

"It's a classic scenario comparing apples and oranges, which results in the inevitable result that our observations do not match," they said in the statement.

Marie Catherine Sforna, from the University of Liege in Belgium, said: "Finding traces of early age is undoubtedly a difficult task and is often controversial.

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