A new habitat to search for early life on Earth

Research conducted by ACA co-director Martin Van Kranendonk, ACA founding director Malcolm Walter, and colleagues from around the world have found microfossils from 2.3 Ga rocks that occur in what is a new setting for early life from deep time. In a ground-breaking study that integrates a variety of threads of evidence, the authors show that well preserved microfossils in black chert layers of the Turee Creek Group in Western Australia lived in a deep-water setting, below storm wave base and probably also below the photic zone. The long, thread-like morphology of the microfossils is identical to those recovered from living communities that cycle sulfur and are not dependent on light to live. Such a community is known as a sulfuretum, and the fossil discovery is the first recorded occurrence of this type of community in this type of setting from the geological record. (Please include photo attached = Turee Ck G-2).