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Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Author Spotlight: Understanding Microbe Adaptation Using Innovative Techniques for Exploring Thermophilic Evolution
Published on: June 14, 2024
Sulfur-cycling fossil bacteria from the 1.8-Ga Duck Creek Formation provide promising evidence of evolution's null
J William Schopf1, Anatoliy B Kudryavtsev2, Malcolm R Walter3
1Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, and Molecular Biology Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095; Penn State Astrobiology Research Center, University Park, PA 16802; Astrobiology Research Consortium and schopf@ess.ucla.edu.
Abstract:
The recent discovery of a deep-water sulfur-cycling microbial biota in the ∼ 2.3-Ga Western Australian Turee Creek Group opened a new window to life's early history. We now report a second such subseafloor-inhabiting community from the Western Australian ∼ 1.8-Ga Duck Creek Formation. Permineralized in cherts formed during and soon after the 2.4- to 2.2-Ga "Great Oxidation Event," these two biotas may evidence an opportunistic response to the mid-Precambrian increase of environmental oxygen that resulted in increased production of metabolically useable sulfate and nitrate. The marked similarity of microbial morphology, habitat, and organization of these fossil communities to their modern counterparts documents exceptionally slow (hypobradytelic) change that, if paralleled by their molecular biology, would evidence extreme evolutionary stasis.
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