University of Lynneus in Sweden found out that the most ancient rock rocks on Earth could be inhabited by microorganisms of no more than a billion years. The results of the study are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
It is estimated that 10-20 percent of the entire GROUND biomass is contained in the so-called deep biosphere, for example, in cracks of cratones – ancient platforms, whose foundation dates back to the Precambrian Eon (from several billion to 540 million years ago). Underground biomass is represented by microorganisms that receive energy from gases, nutrient solutes and a small amount of organic matter.
Multon breeds formed billions of years ago deep in the earth’s crust, where the temperatures were too high for the existence of life. Later they reached a level that is more suitable for the existence of microorganisms. Researchers followed the thermal history of cratones, analyzing the ratio of radioisotopes to find out which periods these breeds became inhabited. This thermochronological approach made it possible to determine that the longest time of the inhabitants of the cratones does not exceed a billion years.
The oldest breeds on Earth are dated by four billion years, however, as the results of the study show, most of their existence they were uninhabited due to high temperature (more than 122 degrees Celsius). In some briefly, inhabited conditions are dating only 50-300 million years.