
World’s Oldest Fossils Now Appear to Be Squished Rocks - gotocake
https://www.quantamagazine.org/worlds-oldest-fossils-now-appear-to-be-squished-rocks-20181022/
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kleopullin
This is an interesting not fully resolved debate in geology/paleontology. This
is a great article that discusses some of the need for the debate, and the
comments on the article in later issues name some of the other major players.
I think anyone interested in the question of life in the universe outside of
our own little biosphere might enjoy reading this as an intro to the debate:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X12002432)

It's available on Research Gate, too.

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andrewflnr
This seems like good science, but it doesn't do much to change the idea that
life started ridiculously early. Is 200my a big deal in that question?

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mcguire
The timeline in the article shows the Late Heavy Bombardment dropping lots of
asteroids on the Earth until about 3.8B years ago. The alleged stromatolites
are from ~3.7Bya. 200My at that point isa but of a big deal.

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cbkeller
There's also an active debate about whether the LHB actually happened, which
adds to the stakes a bit:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10802](http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10802)

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notjustanymike
The paleontologists were crushed, and now the geologists are feeling the
pressure.

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tabtab
Aww, somebody ran over a poor Horta. (Trek reference)

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everdrive
>rocks

Wait till these guys find out what most fossils are made of

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dang
Please don't do this here. Follow the site guidelines instead:

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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everdrive
Excuse me sir, this was a hilarious quip and not a shallow dismissal. Probably
my comment is still against site rules in this case, but it was lighthearted
and delightful, not dismissive.

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dang
Ok, point taken about it not being dismissive. It's hard to tell sometimes!

Jokes aren't against the rules but they have to be pretty good not to count as
unsubstantive comments. Most people overrate how funny their jokes are. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289).

