Unusual cells without walls can create structures (main image) that resemble those found in 3.4-billion-year-old rocks from Buck Reef, South Africa (inset)
Dheeraj Kanaparthi et al. (2024); Tice et al., (2009)
The oldest rocks on Earth contain mysterious fossils of cells that appear to be unlike anything alive today, leaving biologists puzzled as to how they evolved. Now, experiments have shown that these fossils could be of primitive cells that lacked the ability to fully control their shape, making them a precursor to the modern cells we see today.
Sedimentary rocks that formed up to 3.8 billion years ago – not…
