Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Life in Kimberlite Samples

Scientists have discovered traces of carbon, the essential element of life, from the Cambrian Explosion thought to have taken place 540 million years ago. While there were only single-celled organisms in the world before this explosion, most large animal groups emerged with this explosion and continued their evolutionary function.

Evidence that life forms have changed the chemical makeup of Earth’s mantle since that eruption.

150 different kimberlite samples

According to Newsweek, in this study, scientists examined about 150 different kimberlite samples from volcanic regions around the world and found many differences in their chemical structure depending on their age. Kimberlites are diamond rocks found in the interior of the earth.

While the oldest kimberlites showed the right amount of carbon isotopes, the situation changed when they examined younger samples dating back about 250 million years. Younger kimberlites, according to the hypothesis, showed variations of certain types of carbon originating from organic matter formed by the Cambrian explosion.

The Cambrian explosion that took place in Earth’s ancient oceans gave rise to many unprecedented and complex species with gills, hard shells, toothed jaws.

Natural History Museum

Organisms that emerged in the Cambrian Explosion would eventually percolate to the seafloor, become sediment and be drawn into the Earth’s mantle. Hundreds of millions of years later, they would be transported back to the surface, becoming samples of kimberlite.

Only small amounts of sediment from the ocean floor typically bring it up to Earth’s mantle, so the changes organic matter made to magma researchers were quite significant.

Life forms in the oceans

Lead author Andrea Giuliani of the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich said, “The enormous increase in life forms in the oceans decisively changed what was happening on the Earth’s surface. And this, in turn, affected the composition of sediments at the bottom of the ocean.”

“The Earth is really a complex overall system,” he said. “And we now want to understand this system in more detail”.

Scientists around the globe not only work on the surface of Earth but also examine gases extracted from lunar soil collected back in 1972.