The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Team finds Earth's 'oldest rocks'" (BBC News, September 26, 2008) James Morgan reports:

Writing in Science journal, a team reports finding that a sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any rocks known.

It may even hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms.

Geologist Don Francis and graduate student Jonathan O'Neil of McGill University in Montreal have found an ancient greenstone ("faux amphibolite") which may be the oldest rock known.

The rock was dated to between 3.8 and 4.28 billion years ago. "4.28 billion is the figure I favour," says Francis. It is not surprising that he favours the latter date, since it would make his find about 250 million years older than the second oldest one, the Acasta Gneiss in Canada's Northwest Territories, dated at 4.03 billion years old.

But now what's this about life? Well, honestly, right now, it's mostly imagination. The greenstone shows a banded iron formation of magnetite and quartz also found in rock around deep sea hydrothermal vents. Many think that these vents hosted early life on earth.

"These ribbons could imply that 4.3 billion years ago, Earth had an ocean, with hydrothermal circulation," said Francis.

"Now, some people believe that to make precipitation work, you also need bacteria.

"If that were true, then this would be the oldest evidence of life.

"But if I were to say that, people would yell and scream and say that there is no hard evidence."

O'Neil adds,

We know that probably the right environment was there for life to be on the Earth -- so liquid water and all it takes to have life. Now was there life? This is a big question mark"

Actually, the geologists are probably safe. People are pretty open to speculation around the origin of life. But let us say that their wildest dreams come true an they do find hard evidence of life in these rocks. In that case, life started on Earth almost immediately after the planet cooled (in geological terms, that is). If so, then life clearly did not originate via a long slow random swish of chemicals, as we have been encouraged to believe.

Francis and O'Neil hade been looking for clues on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec about the Earth's mantle from 3.8 billion years ago when they found the outcrop of the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. It was dated at the Carnegie Institution of Washington by measuring the isotopes of neodymium and samarium, rare elements that decay at a known rate.

Here are some other "oldest rocks" stories, and some photos put up by Professor Francis.

See also

Origin of life: Positive evidence of intelligent design?

Origin of life: But is being greedy enough?

Origin of life: Ah, that "just so happens" intermediate series of chemical steps

Why should the search for Darwin's "warm little puddle" be publicly funded?

Also just up at Colliding Universes, my blog about competing theories of our universe:

Galactic habitable zone not unique, computer sim suggests

Hail, ceaseless complexity! Or maybe
FAIL, ceaseless complexity. How much can complexity really do for us without design or purpose?

Time is the only true mystery?

Like clouds in our coffee ... all these other universes ...

Mathematics: 46th Mersenne prime number found

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).