Massive Microbial Population Colonized Land 2.75 Billion Years Ago (via Planetsave)
New research from the University of Washington is suggesting that the earliest land microbes were probably much more widespread than previously thought, creating oxygen and weathering pyrite, which is an iron sulfide mineral that releases sulfur and molybdenum into the oceans when ‘weathered.’…
Picture: Roger Buick/UW A drill core from the 2.5 billion-year-old Mount McRae Shale formation in Western Australia, which originally was fine-grained ocean sediment, shows high concentrations of sulfide and molybdenum. That supports the idea that most of the sulfate came from land, likely freed by microbial activity on rocks. Some data for the research came from the Mount McRae formation.
