A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood, oil, coal, and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the fossil record.
Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles to settle in place. The particles that form a sedimentary rock are called sediment, and may be composed of geological detritus (minerals) or biological detritus. The geological detritus originated from weathering and erosion of existing rocks, or from the solidification of molten lava blobs erupted by volcanoes. The geological detritus is transported to the place of deposition by water, wind, ice or mass movement, which are called agents of denudation. Biological detritus was formed by bodies and parts of dead aquatic organisms, as well as their fecal mass, suspended in water and slowly piling up on the floor of water bodies. Sedimentation may also occur as dissolved minerals precipitate from water solution.
The Archean Eon is the second of four geologic eons of Earth's history, representing the time from 4,000 to 2,500 million years ago. In this time, the Earth's crust had cooled enough for continents to form and for the earliest known life to start. Life was simple throughout the Archean, mostly represented by shallow-water microbial mats called stromatolites, and the atmosphere lacked free oxygen. The Archean was preceded by the Hadean Eon and followed by the Proterozoic.
Chert is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a chemical precipitate or a diagenetic replacement, as in petrified wood.
A trace fossil, also ichnofossil, is a fossil record of biological activity but not the preserved remains of the plant or animal itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of parts of organisms' bodies, usually altered by later chemical activity or mineralization. Ichnology is the study of such trace fossils and is the work of ichnologists.
Pseudofossils are inorganic objects, markings, or impressions that might be mistaken for fossils. Pseudofossils may be misleading, as some types of mineral deposits can mimic lifeforms by forming what appear to be highly detailed or organized structures. One common example is when manganese oxides crystallize with a characteristic treelike or dendritic pattern along a rock fracture. The formation of frost dendrites on a window is another common example of this crystal growth. Concretions are sometimes thought to be fossils, and occasionally one contains a fossil, but are generally not fossils themselves. Chert or flint nodules in limestone can often take forms that resemble fossils.
A biogenic substance is a product made by or of life forms. While the term originally was specific to metabolite compounds that had toxic effects on other organisms, it has developed to encompass any constituents, secretions, and metabolites of plants or animals. In context of molecular biology, biogenic substances are referred to as biomolecules. They are generally isolated and measured through the use of chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques. Additionally, the transformation and exchange of biogenic substances can by modelled in the environment, particularly their transport in waterways.
Abiogenic petroleum origin is a body of hypotheses which propose that petroleum and natural gas deposits are mostly formed by inorganic means, rather than by the decomposition of organisms. Thomas Gold's deep gas hypothesis states that some natural gas deposits were formed out of hydrocarbons deep in the Earth's mantle. Theories explaining the origin of petroleum as abiotic are generally not well accepted by the scientific community, and are rejected by most researchers and scientific theories on the subject.
A biosignature is any substance – such as an element, isotope, or molecule – or phenomenon that provides scientific evidence of past or present life. Measurable attributes of life include its complex physical or chemical structures and its use of free energy and the production of biomass and wastes. A biosignature can provide evidence for living organisms outside the Earth and can be directly or indirectly detected by searching for their unique byproducts.
A microfossil is a fossil that is generally between 0.001 mm and 1 mm in size, the visual study of which requires the use of light or electron microscopy. A fossil which can be studied with the naked eye or low-powered magnification, such as a hand lens, is referred to as a macrofossil.
Geobiology is a field of scientific research that explores the interactions between the physical Earth and the biosphere. It is a relatively young field, and its borders are fluid. There is considerable overlap with the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, microbiology, paleontology, and particularly soil science and biogeochemistry. Geobiology applies the principles and methods of biology, geology, and soil science to the study of the ancient history of the co-evolution of life and Earth as well as the role of life in the modern world. Geobiologic studies tend to be focused on microorganisms, and on the role that life plays in altering the chemical and physical environment of the pedosphere, which exists at the intersection of the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and/or cryosphere. It differs from biogeochemistry in that the focus is on processes and organisms over space and time rather than on global chemical cycles.
The Gunflint chert is a sequence of banded iron formation rocks that are exposed in the Gunflint Range of northern Minnesota and northwestern Ontario along the north shore of Lake Superior. The Gunflint Chert is of paleontological significance, as it contains evidence of microbial life from the Paleoproterozoic. The Gunflint Chert is composed of biogenic stromatolites. At the time of its discovery in the 1950s, it was the earliest form of life discovered and described in scientific literature, as well as the earliest evidence for photosynthesis. The black layers in the sequence contain microfossils that are 1.9 to 2.3 billion years in age. Stromatolite colonies of cyanobacteria that have converted to jasper are found in Ontario. The banded ironstone formation consists of alternating strata of iron oxide-rich layers interbedded with silica-rich zones. The iron oxides are typically hematite or magnetite with ilmenite, while the silicates are predominantly cryptocrystalline quartz as chert or jasper, along with some minor silicate minerals.
The Isua Greenstone Belt is an Archean greenstone belt in southwestern Greenland. The belt is aged between 3.7 and 3.8 billion years. The belt contains variably metamorphosed mafic volcanic and sedimentary rocks. The occurrence of boninitic geochemical signatures, characterized by extreme depletion in trace elements that are not fluid mobile, offers evidence that plate tectonic processes in which lithic crust is melted may have been responsible for the creation of the belt. Another theory posits that the belt formed via a process known as vertical plate tectonics.
Vendiamorpha is a class of extinct animals within the Ediacaran phylum Proarticulata.
The "Cambrian substrate revolution" or "Agronomic revolution", evidenced in trace fossils, is the diversification of animal burrowing during the early Cambrian period.
A microbial mat is a multi-layered sheet of microorganisms, mainly bacteria and archaea, and also just bacterial. Microbial mats grow at interfaces between different types of material, mostly on submerged or moist surfaces, but a few survive in deserts. A few are found as endosymbionts of animals.
The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt is a sequence of metamorphosed mafic to ultramafic volcanic and associated sedimentary rocks located on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, 40 km southeast of Inukjuak, Quebec. These rocks have undergone extensive metamorphism, and represent some of the oldest rocks on Earth.
The Barberton Greenstone Belt of eastern South Africa contains some of the most widely accepted fossil evidence for Archean life. These cell-sized prokaryote fossils are seen in the Barberton fossil record in rocks as old as 3.5 billion years. The Barberton Greenstone Belt is an excellent place to study the Archean Earth due to exposed sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks.
Arumberia is an enigmatic fossil from the Ediacaran period originally described from the Arumbera Sandstone, Northern Territory, Australia but also found in the Urals, East Siberia, England and Wales, Northern France, the Avalon Peninsula and India. Several morphologically distinct species are recognized.
The Francevillian biota is a group of 2.1-billion-year-old Palaeoproterozoic, macroscopic organisms known from fossils found in Gabon in the Palaeoproterozoic Francevillian B Formation, a black shale province. The fossils are postulated to be evidence of the earliest form of multicellular life. The fossils were discovered by an international team led by the Moroccan-French geologist Abderrazak El Albani, of the University of Poitiers, France. While the fossils have yet to be assigned to a formal taxonomic position, they have been informally and collectively referred to as the "Gabonionta" by the Natural History Museum Vienna in 2014.
International Geological Congress, 24th Session, Montreal, Proceedings of Section 1, p. 20-30.
