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wedge inside rocks in the abstruse sea off the coast of Western Australia mill around an being that has n’t evolved in more than 2 billion years , scientists say .
From this deep - sea position , a squad of researchers roll up fossilizedsulfur bacteriathat was 1.8 billion age one-time and compared it to bacteria that lived in the same area 2.3 billion years ago . Both sets of microbes were indistinguishable from mod sulfur bacterium receive off the coast of Chile .
These sulfur bacteria haven’t evolved for billions of years.
But do the findings belie Darwin ’s possibility of evolution ? [ Evolution vs. Creationism : 6 handsome Battles ]
" It seems astounding that [ this ] sprightliness has not germinate for more than 2 billion years — nearly half the story of the Earth , " the study ’s loss leader , J. William Schopf , a paleobiologist at UCLA , said in a statement . " give that evolution is a fact , this lack of evolution needs to be explained . "
Darwin ’s possibility of evolutionby natural survival state of matter that all mintage develop from heritable genetic changes that make an case-by-case better able to subsist in its surroundings and reproduce .
So how can Darwin ’s hypothesis account for these apparently nonchanging bacterium ? The answer comes in looking at the bacterium ’s similarly stable surroundings . True , the recondite - sea bacteria in this study have n’t shift for eons , but neither has their environment , Schopf said . Darwin ’s theory does n’t call for being to develop unless their surround changes , so the microbe ' lack of evolution is consistent with the theory , Schopf added .
To equate the fossils , Schopf and his colleagues used a method acting know as Raman spectroscopy to measure the composition and chemistry of the rocks . Then , using confocal laser scanning microscopy , they produced 3D images of the fossils and compared these visualizations with the New bacteria . The ancient bug await indistinguishable to the present - solar day ones , the team found .
The fogey studied escort back to a period known as the Great Oxidation Event , which occurred when oxygen floor soar up on Earth between 2.2 billion and 2.4 billion old age ago . During this clip , there was also a great ascent in sulfate and nitrate levels , which provided all the nutrition the atomic number 16 bacteria demand to survive and regurgitate . The surroundings inside these deep - ocean rock has n’t changed since then , so there has been no need for the organisms to adapt , the researchers said .
The finding were published yesterday ( Feb. 2 ) in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
