Earth’s first life evolved in hell.
The earliest lifeforms emerged at least 3.95 billion years ago, at a time when a near constant barrage of comets and asteroids were bombarding our still solidifying planet. That’s the implication of new research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
A group of Japanese scientists journeyed into a remote stretch of northern Labrador, Canada, where they chiseled samples from some of Earth’s oldest rocks. They braved bugs, bad weather and polar bears; they returned with what could be evidence for some of the oldest life on Earth.
The results are controversial — other experts doubt their dates. But they join a growing chorus of researchers pushing back the origin of life to a time when scientists once thought Earth would be uninhabitable.
