Acidic lakes are not a good environment for life to thrive. But a new study shows the exact opposite.
A team of researchers led by Andrea Agangi from Akita University in Japan suggests that early life forms managed to adapt to survive in such lakes soon after emerging from the sea.
If life appeared on two planets at the same time, they could preserve almost the same kind of life.
The scientists came to this conclusion after performing geochemical analysis of sedimentary rocks about 3 billion years old found in the Witwatersrand basin in South Africa.
While Agangi’s group focused their attention on the Dominion group, a rock system that was assembled during the Mesoarchean Era and mainly composed of volcanic rock, particularly known locally known sedimentary rocks as Wonderstone caught their attention.
Realizing that the rock’s color appears to come from a carbon-rich material interspersed between its grains, the team set out to determine the source of that material and discovered a scarcity of the heaviest form of the element. element, which indicates that it has come from living organisms.
“It’s the carbon that has to come from dead microorganisms,” says Agangi.
The researchers further determined that the carbon profile matches what is expected in methane-producing organisms, in the microbial field known as Archaea , which is known for its ability to survive under conditions. hard.
“In general, you would think that acidity isn’t beneficial to life. But it washes away nutrients from volcanic rocks, which are essential for life,” Agangi said.
The team also hypothesized that Wonderstone could allow scientists to better understand the ancient lake environment on Mars.
Keyron Hickman-Lewis, a geologist from the Natural History Museum in London, said: “These and ancient Martian rocks date back as far back in early Solar System history. If life appeared on two planets at the same time, they could preserve almost the same kind of life.”