'It was a discovery that scientists proclaimed was the oldest evidence of life on our planet.But researchers who thought they had found 3.5 billion-year-old bacteria fossils in Australian rock have been left red-faced after U.S geologists debunked their findings.
A team from the University of Kansas said the microscopic structures are nothing more than tiny gaps in the rock that are packed with lifeless minerals.
Not fossils: The arrows point to the spots in the rock that were thought to be evidence of the earliest life on Earth. The scale shows 100 micrometres (one micrometre is a millionth of a metre)
Instead of primeval oxygen-producing cyanobacteria, they were found to be bits of the iron mineral hematite.
The scientists who reexamined the rock known as the Apex Chert, have published a study in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Team member Professor Alison Marshall, said: 'We found no sign of any microfossil.
'What we found were minerals that took the appearance of life. We went into this assuming these were microfossils - as was pretty well accepted in the scientific community.
'It was a good lesson in trusting your data over what you’d been told you should find. At every step of the way, we would do an experiment expecting to find one result and find the complete opposite instead.'
Quite! Yet again scientists ' have jumped to unwarranted conclusions' - for once, it hasn't taken a generation for the truth to be revealed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1367544/Whoops-Scientists-left-red-faced-oldest-evidence-life-turns-iron-deposits.html#ixzz1H10j9Km9
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1367544/Whoops-Scientists-left-red-faced-oldest-evidence-life-turns-iron-deposits.html#ixzz1H10j9Km9
