<I>Primaevifilum amoenum</I> (IMAGE)

University of Wisconsin-Madison

<I>Primaevifilum amoenum</I>

Caption

An example of one of the microfossils discovered in a sample of rock recovered from the Apex Chert, a rock formation in western Australia that is among the oldest and best-preserved rock deposits in the world. The fossils were first described in 1993 but a 2017 study published by UCLA and UW-Madison scientists used sophisticated chemical analysis to confirm the microscopic structures found in the rock are indeed biological, rendering them -- at 3.5 billion years -- the oldest fossils yet found.

Credit

Courtesy of J. William Schopf, UCLA

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