Geologists from the University of New South Wales said that inhabited hot springs appeared on Earth three billion years earlier than expected. The findings of the researchers were published in the journal Nature Communications.

According to one of the theories of the origin of life, the protocells appeared not in the sea, but in fresh water, particularly in geysers and lakes. In favor of this hypothesis is the discovery in such reservoirs of stromatolites - fossil remains of cyanobacterial mats.

Until now, the age of the most ancient stromatolites was estimated at 3.48 billion years.

These formations, which included facultative aerobes, anaerobes and photosynthesizing cyanobacteria, were found in the territory of the Pilbar craton in Western Australia - part of a hypothetical supercontinent that existed 3.6-2.8 billion years ago.

Now scientists have tested the hypothesis of "a small warm pond," comparing a map of stromatolites with hydrotherms in the crest of Pilbar. In total, using the methods of Raman spectroscopy and X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), they studied samples of 47 stratigraphic sections.