"This discovery represents a new benchmark for the oldest preserved evidence of life on Earth," Professor Martin Julian Van Kranendonk, a geology expert at the University of New South Wales and one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement. "The structures and geochemistry from the newly exposed outcrops in Greenland display all of the features used in younger rocks to argue for a biological origin. It points to a rapid emergence of life on Earth. "The significance for Mars is that 3,700 million years ago, Mars was probably still wet and probably still had oceans and so on, so if life develops so quickly on Earth to be able to form things like stromatolites -- it might be more easy to detect signs of life on Mars," Nutman told AFP. "Instead of looking at just the chemical signature, we might be able to see things like stromatolites in images (from Mars) sent back to Earth.

Source: The Nation Bangkok September 01, 2016 09:22 UTC