ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 97 papers.
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Who cites it
97 citing papers in PubMed, 456 citations in OpenAlex.
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- DPANN Archaea and CPR Bacteria: insights into early cellular evolution?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- What the earliest evidence for life tells us about the early evolution of the biosphere.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Other Earths, Gaian bottlenecks and Darwinized Gaias.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
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- Evolution of complex chemical mixtures reveals combinatorial compression and population synchronicity.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
37 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evidence of life on Earth is manifestly preserved in the rock record. However, the microfossil record only extends to ∼ 3.5 billion years (Ga), the chemofossil record arguably to ∼ 3.8 Ga, and the rock record to 4.0 Ga. Detrital zircons from Jack Hills, Western Australia range in age up to nearly 4.4 Ga. From a population of over 10,000 Jack Hills zircons, we identified one >3.8-Ga zircon that contains primary graphite inclusions. Here, we report carbon isotopic measurements on these inclusions in a concordant, 4.10 ± 0.01-Ga zircon. We interpret these inclusions as primary due to their enclosure in a crack-free host as shown by transmission X-ray microscopy and their crystal habit. Their δ(13)CPDB of -24 ± 5‰ is consistent with a biogenic origin and may be evidence that a terrestrial biosphere had emerged by 4.1 Ga, or ∼ 300 My earlier than has been previously proposed.
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