'New' fossil pushes back date of first known life
April 3, 1980
Los Angeles
The earliest form of life found on earth, dating back 3.5 billion years, has been discovered embedded in a rock brought from Western Australia, the University of California at Los Angeles announced Tuesday. The rock revealed the fossilized marks of a microbial community, made up of tiny bacterialike cells. The discovery pushes back by 400 million years the date of the earliest known biological life.