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Earliest known life forms
Summary
The earliest known life forms on Earth are believed to be fossilized microorganisms found in hydrothermal vent precipitates, considered to be about 3.42 billion years old. The earliest time for the origin of life on Earth is at least 3.77 billion years ago, possibly as early as 4.28 billion years ago—not long after the oceans formed 4.5 billion years ago, and after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. The earliest direct evidence of life on Earth is from microfossils of microorganisms permineralized in 3.465-billion-year-old Australian Apex chert rocks, although the validity of these microfossils is debated.
Earth remains the only place in the universe known to harbor life. The origin of life on Earth was at least 3.77 billion years ago, possibly as early as 4.28 billion years ago. The Earth's biosphere extends down to at least below the surface, and up to at least into the atmosphere, and includes soil, hydrothermal vents, and rock. Further, the biosphere has been found to extend at least below the ice of Antarctica, and includes the deepest parts of the ocean, down to rocks kilometers below the sea floor. In July 2020, marine biologists reported that aerobic microorganisms (mainly), in "quasi-suspended animation", were found in organically-poor sediments, up to 101.5 million years old, below the seafloor in the South Pacific Gyre (SPG) ("the deadest spot in the ocean"), and could be the longest-living life forms ever found. Under certain test conditions, life forms have been observed to survive in the vacuum of outer space. More recently, in August 2020, bacteria were found to survive for three years in outer space, according to studies conducted on the International Space Station. In February 2023, findings of a "dark microbiome" of unfamiliar microorganisms in the Atacama Desert in Chile, a Mars-like region of planet Earth, were reported. The total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 trillion tons of carbon.
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