Posted on Sunday, October 05 2008 @ 8:16 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
A team of scientists
found a sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone on the shore of Hudson Bay, Canada with an age of 4.28 billion years. That's 250 million years older than any rocks known and what makes it even more exciting is that the rock may hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms.
Writing in Science journal, a team reports finding that a sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any rocks known.
It may even hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms.
If so, it would be the earliest evidence of life on Earth - but co-author Don Francis cautioned that this had not been established.
"The rocks contain a very special chemical signature - one that can only be found in rocks which are very, very old," he said.
The professor of geology, who is based at McGill University in Montreal, added: "Nobody has found that signal any place else on the Earth."
"Originally, we thought the rocks were maybe 3.8 billion years old.
