The Oldest Life

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Life arose on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago (perhaps as much as 3.9 billion years ago).

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The story of Earth's life covers 86.7% of the scroll.

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Stromatolites are the earliest known fossils (this one is 3.5 million years old).  

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Stromatolites are rock-like structures that were
built by a type of blue-green algae called cyanobacteria.

Stromatolites were thought to have been extinct until forty years ago.

(photo courtesy Discover West Holidays)
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"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one, and that from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved"

--- Charles Darwin

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