Early Life Recorded in Archean Pillow Lavas

doi:10.1126/science.1095858

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Early Life Recorded in Archean Pillow Lavas

Harald Furnes,¹^* Neil R. Banerjee,¹^,2 Karlis Muehlenbachs,² Hubert Staudigel,³ Maarten de Wit⁴

Pillow lava rims from the Mesoarchean Barberton Greenstone Beltin South Africa contain micrometer-scale mineralized tubes thatprovide evidence of submarine microbial activity during theearly history of Earth. The tubes formed during microbial etchingof glass along fractures, as seen in pillow lavas from recentoceanic crust. The margins of the tubes contain organic carbon,and many of the pillow rims exhibit isotopically light bulk-rockcarbonate ${delta}$ ¹³C values, supporting their biogenic origin. Overlappingmetamorphic and magmatic dates from the pillow lavas suggestthat microbial life colonized these subaqueous volcanic rockssoon after their eruption almost 3.5 billion years ago.

¹ Department of Earth Science, University of Bergen, Allegaten 41, 5007 Bergen, Norway.
² Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E3, Canada.
³ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, La Jolla, CA 92093–0225, USA.
⁴ Centre for Interactive Graphical Computing of Earth Systems, Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa.

These authors contributed equally to this work.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Harald.Furnes{at}geo.uib.no

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