The –est Paleontology

Greenland may be home to Earth’s oldest fossils

3.7-billion-year old mounds signal early microbes

stromatolites

EARLY START  The wavelike mounds of sediment called stromatolites (marked by dashed lines) embedded inside this cross section of a 3.7-billion-year-old rock may be the oldest known fossilized evidence of life on Earth.

A. Nutman, A.C. Allwood/Nature 2016

By Thomas Sumner

- More than 2 years ago

A melting snow patch in Greenland has revealed what could be the oldest fossilized evidence of life on Earth.