It surprises me that every time an announcement is made that some well-established knowledge, however temporary it might be, gets pronounced out of date, there is the inevitable cry and clamor of all those who denounce it as a hoax, a blasphemy, an incomplete joke, you name it. I was reminded of this recently when a group of Australian geologist, looking at some recently uncovered rocks (either global warming or little snow the previous winter or both) in Greenland found what looked like fossilized microbial mats, or pillows of slime less than two inches high, otherwise known as stromatolites and formed by bacterial communities living in shallow water. They dated the rocks to 3,700 million years ago, making these fossils the oldest evidence for life on earth, moving back the clock from the previous “oldest fossils” by two hundred million years.
Cool, and not bad I say. But still, what’s the big deal?
The big deal my friends is that scientist, it turns out, are as jealous as teenage girls at a beauty pageant, and can’t stand to be outmaneuvered: they say mean things about each other and their boyfriends or Perú, or Múzquiz . . . but enough of that.
Mainly, now we know that life started here on earth soon after the planet formed, and I like that. What’s more, these geologist expect to find the previous life forms, the one that these newly found bacteria came from, in the near future, thanks to the ever accelerating melting ice sheet over Greenland.
If we had to warm the planet to find this out, I say “so be it.”
For all those who carry around a fossilized brain full of ancient ideas padlocked and set in concrete, I invite to El Chap this Saturday 9-3-16. Our team there is ready to assist with bolt cutters, concrete chippers and de-fossilizing solution served in a coffee cup.
Y a la hora de siempre!!
mt