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Nature 452, 40-41 (6 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/452040a; Published online 5 March 2008
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Palaeontology: Modern life in ancient mats
Michael M. Tice1
Abstract
Microbial communities seem to have inhabited tidal sediments 2.9 billion years ago much as they do today — but what organisms were involved, and how they made their living, remain intriguing questions.
Establishing from fossil records how microbes and microbial ecosystems evolved is not an easy task: although 'microfossils' have been used to infer the presence and identity of microbes in particular environments1, 2, their simple shapes and comparative rarity limit what they can tell us. An alternative approach is to look for traces of products from communities of microorganisms3, 4.
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