Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 8 March 2002:
Vol. 295. no. 5561, p. 1812
DOI: 10.1126/science.295.5561.1812
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News of the Week

PALEONTOLOGY:
Earliest Signs of Life Just Oddly Shaped Crud?

Richard A. Kerr

A claim for the oldest known fossils-fossils that have entered textbooks as the oldest ever found-is under attack as a misinterpretation of intriguingly shaped but purely lifeless minerals. A paper in this week's issue of Nature argues that the microscopic squiggles in a 3.5-billion-year-old Australian chert are not fossilized bacteria, as was claimed in a 1993 Science paper, but the curiously formed dregs of ancient hot-spring chemistry.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)