Life began earlier than previously thought

Professor Rasmussen said that this research, conducted in India by a team from Sweden, Denmark and Curtin in Western Australia, is exciting, as it opens a whole new window onto the beginning of life on our planet.

“New sampling of the Vindhyan basin in India has confirmed the presence of fossils older than has been previously accepted,” said Professor Rasmussen.

“These fossils, which are more than 1.6 billion years old, are likely to be more than a billion years older than what was previously accepted for fossils found in this region.

“They are also between 400 and 600 million years older than any multi-cellular life found anywhere on the planet.

According to Professor Rasmussen, the reason for the differences in the result from this test compared to earlier research was that his team used world’s best practices to get the job done right.

“This was the first independent test done in the region,” he said.

“Previous reports were based on material separated in Indian labs, which may have been contaminated by other rock samples.

“The team that I worked with wanted to avoid prospects of contamination, so we made sure that the fossils were separated from the surrounding rocks in labs that we were certain could do the job correctly.

The age of the fossils was determined using lead dating of the phosphorate in the fossils. This is deposited with the organic material that becomes fossilised when it is buried in the sea floor, billions of years ago.

“This form of testing is generally very accurate when we are looking at a time scale of over a billion years,” Professor Rasmussen said.

“There is a margin of error, but it should not make a major difference. Certainly not 400 million years worth of difference.”

Despite these early successes, the team is not finished yet.

“We are still working on the research and will continue to study this in more depth.

“There is a wealth of knowledge in the Vindhyan basin and researchers at Curtin will be in on the action when the time comes to exploring it further.”

Curtin University of Technology