UCLA CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
An analysis of 1.8 billion-year-old bacterial fossils trapped in West Australian rocks revealed that the microbes were nearly identical both to fossils that are half a billion years older and to modern-day bacteria found in a similar ecosystem off the coast of South America, according to a study published last week (February 2) in PNAS. The finding provides evidence for a corollary of Darwin’s theory of evolution: if an environment does not change over time, organisms need not evolve and can survive without changes to their lifestyle.
Using spectroscopy and confocal microscopy to examine the fossil-bearing rocks, a team of American, Australian, and Chilean scientists demonstrated that the shape of individual bacteria and the structure of their communities were highly similar to a 2.3 billion-year-old ...
