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A fundamental limit to the search for the oldest fossils

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 832–834 (2022)Cite this article

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Life emerged from and amidst non-living phenomena that already possessed some of the hallmarks now used four billion years later to recognize fossil organisms. It may be next to impossible to distinguish the earliest signs of life against this background. What can we still learn from fossil-like materials on the early Earth and elsewhere?

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Fig. 1: The pseudofossil problem in relation to the earliest organisms.

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Acknowledgements

S.F.J. acknowledges support from ‘la Caixa’ Foundation (ID 100010434) and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie grant agreement no. 847648. The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/PI21/11830015.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UK Centre for Astrobiology, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Sean McMahon

  2. Grant Institute, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Sean McMahon

  3. Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Seán F. Jordan

Authors
  1. Sean McMahon
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Contributions

S.M. conceived the study. Both authors drafted and edited the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sean McMahon.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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McMahon, S., Jordan, S.F. A fundamental limit to the search for the oldest fossils. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 832–834 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01777-0

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