Life arose on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago (perhaps as much as 3.9 billion years ago). | |
The story of Earth's life covers 86.7% of the scroll. | |
Stromatolites are the earliest known fossils (this one is 3.5 million years old). |
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)
"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