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    Geologists Question 'Evidence Of Ancient Life' in 3.7 Billion-Year-Old Rocks

    A new analysis of what were initially thought to be microbial fossils in Greenland suggests they might instead just be mineral structures created when ancient tectonic forces squeezed stone.
    by Nell Greenfieldboyce Oct 17, 2018 3 minutes
    In this photograph of a Greenland research site, arrows indicate the structures that a 2016 team of paleontologists suggested were created by microbial life. Notice that while most of the structures point in one direction, the red arrow shows that some point in the other direction. That's a hint, other scientists now say, that these structures did not all grow upward from the sea floor.

    The oldest evidence of life on Earth probably isn't found in some 3.7 billion-year-old rocks found in Greenland, despite what a group of scientists claimed a couple of years ago.

    That's according to a new analysis, published Wednesday in the journal Nature by a different team of experts.

    This second group examined structures within the rock that were thought in 2016 to have been produced by communities of single-celled microbes that grew up from the bottom of a shallow, salty sea. A three-dimensional

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