Posted on 12/19/2017 3:14:12 AM PST by SkyPilot
Researchers at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have confirmed that microscopic fossils discovered in a nearly 3.5 billion-year-old piece of rock in Western Australia are the oldest fossils ever found and indeed the earliest direct evidence of life on Earth.
An example of one of the microfossils discovered in a sample of rock recovered from the Apex Chert, a rock formation in western Australia that is among the oldest and best-preserved rock deposits in the world. The fossils were first described in 1993 but a 2017 study published by UCLA and UW-Madison scientists used sophisticated chemical analysis to confirm the microscopic structures found in the rock are indeed biological, rendering them -- at 3.5 billion years -- the oldest fossils yet found.
The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by J. William Schopf, professor of paleobiology at UCLA, and John W. Valley, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The research relied on new technology and scientific expertise developed by researchers in the UW-Madison WiscSIMS Laboratory.
The study describes 11 microbial specimens from five separate taxa, linking their morphologies to chemical signatures that are characteristic of life. Some represent now-extinct bacteria and microbes from a domain of life called Archaea, while others are similar to microbial species still found today. The findings also suggest how each may have survived on an oxygen-free planet.
The microfossils -- so called because they are not evident to the naked eye -- were first described in the journal Science in 1993 by Schopf and his team, which identified them based largely on the fossils' unique, cylindrical and filamentous shapes. Schopf, director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
That phrase always bothers me - reminds me of the "Climate Change" gurus.
Using a secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) at UW-Madison called IMS 1280 -- one of just a handful of such instruments in the world -- Valley and his team, including department geoscientists Kouki Kitajima and Michael Spicuzza, were able to separate the carbon composing each fossil into its constituent isotopes and measure their ratios.
Any geologists or other scientists out there? How are these scientists convinced that the rocks themselves are billions of years old? Using Isotopes? How?
This piece certainly leaves some questions regarding the age of the earth:
Info for the thread: this article appears on Drudge’s page today.
Oz Rocks Ping!
8K years max.
God says so. Men deny God’s Word. I’ll stick with the One who was there at the beginning.
“In the beginning...
...God created...
...was the Word...
...the Word became flesh...”
Merry Christmas!
Oh my.
Out of camera frame: Joe Biden left his initials in the mud and they fossilized too.
Whether we like to admit it or not we all deny God’s word. We all like to strut our stuff every Sunday and prove to everyone that we are true believers in the Word but come Monday we are back to our old and evil ways. But honestly, our only hope is that God loves us very much and as long as we share that love even in a small way we will always be His child.
The great I Am
He can and will do what He pleases.
If He is for us, who can be against us?
You cited a reference but it is unsubstantiated.
Chapter and verse please
You need chapter and verse cause you are going to look it up in your well worn Bible....right....
Precisely :-\
That looks like John chapter 1, but I haven’t read a Bible in years, it may be 1 John.
Fossils come from electo-active silt deposits. Without electron flow the sediments cannot bind. The electron flow can come from multi metal types included in the silt which only happens in catastrophic flooding that mixes different ore deposits after fine grinding.
Mix two different mountains and you get fossils, if you grind them first to a fine slurry.
The trick is that you must grind first, then include the animals. Can’t do that with a localized flood. Must have rising waters on the long term to have mass animal deposits.
Otherwise the softer animals grind to mush long before the rock does.
Gotta have a Noah flood situation to cause mass fossilization.
How are these scientists convinced that the rocks themselves are billions of years old? Using Isotopes? How?
...
One clue is these fossils were found in the Pilbara Craton. Look it up.
Great reply, thx
The fossils in question would have come from a lake or sea bed.
You need chapter and verse cause you are going to look it up in your well worn Bible....right....
...
At the very least it’s worth a trip over to BibleHub.
The article has been re-written and no longer includes your quote, nor does the sentence, “I think it’s settled,” he says” appear anywhere.
A commenter mentions that this piece was not fact checked saying, “the description in the article is of atomic emission spectroscopy, not mass spectrometry.”
Another commenter mentions that one of the flaws in modern science is the assumption that things today were the same long ago - a gradual progression that achieves a satisfactory status quo, leaving all of us feeling comfortable that our world will not change dramatically overnight, despite evidence that it has in the past: evidence sometimes mentioned, but always rapidly skipped over.
Science Daily rewrote the article? Wow.
I just posted it a couple of hours ago. It is linked on Drudge. Perhaps someone got nervous about something in it.
Post #13 - very good information. Thanks.
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