Journal of Biological Physics 20: 85-94, 1994. 85 © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. AGE OF THE OLDEST ROCKS WITH BIOGENIC COMPONENTS: An estimate for the age of the origin of life STEPHEN MOORBATH (+) Department of Earth Sciences, Parks Road. Oxford, OXI 3PR, U.K. Abstract. In a previous review article [1] it was concluded that "it seems that stromatolite-bearing rocks were being produced at ~3450 - 3300 Myr ago (e.g. in Western Australia and Southern Africa), and that Archaean (ie, > 2500 Myr) microfossils showing cell division were in existence by ~3200 - 3000 Myr ago". Furthermore, the evidence for biogenic markers (e.g. putative microfossils, carbon isotopes) in the ~3800 Myr-old metamorphosed sedimentary rocks from Isua, West Greenland was regarded as equivocal, although the depositional palacoenvironment, as deduced from the nature of the Isua rocks, was probably not inimical to earliest life. After due evaluation of all the evidence available in the early 1980's, the review concluded by estimating an age of 4000 + 100 Myr for the origin of life. In the past 12 years or so, the crude time-scale summarised above has not changed drastically, but new evidence from rock dating, from evaluation of biogenicity, and from the dating of early lunar (and, therefore, terrestrial) impacts, has further narrowed the constraints for the timing of earliest evolution, This new evidence is briefly summarised here. An estimate of 3800 + 50 Myr is suggested as a plausible time range for the origin of life and the beginning of continuous, unbroken evolution. 1. The Isua supracrustal sequence, West Greenland ‘Those rocks are discussed first, because they are the oldest known sequence of in-situ sedimentary rocks on earth, Earlier age determinations in the range ~3.7 - 3.8 Gyr (2,3, 4) have been confirmed and refined by more precise measurements on several rock units from Isua using the U-Pb method on zircons and the latest analytical technology, resulting in a few ages possibly as high as ~3800 - 3850 Myr. (5, 6, 7, 8]. Two horizons of metamorphosed, felsic volcanogenic rocks (intercalated with sediments) yielded zircon U-Pb ages of 3806 + 4 Myr and 3708 + 3 Myr respectively [9], suggesting that the Isua sequence contains volcaniclastic rocks differing in age by ~100 Myr. Those measurements (and many other recent ones) were carried out with the SHRIMP ion- probe at the Australian National University in Canberra, and there is a suggestion that their zircon U-Pb dates are reported with errors under-estimated by perhaps as much as (+) Professor of Isotope Geology. University of Oxford86 STEPHEN MOORBATH an order of magnitude [10]. Nevertheless, an age of deposition of around 3800 - 3850 ‘Myr for at least some of the Isua supracrustal rocks seems fairly well established. Mineralogical studies show that the Isua rocks have been metamorphosed at temperatures in the range ~500 - 600°C, at pressures of ~ 5kb and a depth of burial of at east 15 km (11, 12]. Deformation is extremely variable throughout the belt, ranging from highly stretched, sheared, isoclinally-folded units to pockets of low deformation, where sedimentary structures related to original deposition are preserved. Despite the regional metamorphism and deformation, the original nature and depositional environment of the Isua rocks can be clearly identified by standard geological techniques [13]. The favoured environmental model is of a predominantly submarine volcanic area, possibly divided into restricted basins by volcanic piles, and with shallow water depths. The topography of the area was subdued apart from volcanic cones. Intermittent volcanic activity and associated instability produced coarse- and fine- grained volcanigenic sediments (i. produced by erosion of volcanic rocks) which alternate with the (slower) deposition of chemically precipitated sediments such as banded iron-formation (BIF), chert and carbonates. The intimate association of chemical sediments with terrigenous (clastic) materials occurs on all scales down to that of individual beds. There is no evidence that older sialic basement (i.e. continental crust) or emerging granitoid plutons contributed to the clastic material. The Isua sediments must have been deposited on early oceanic crust in and around shallow marine basins near volcanic islands. Of particular interest is the massive deposit of BIF at Isua (first dated in ref, 2), whose chemistry, petrology and origin has been described in detail by Dymek and Klein [12]. It is interpreted as the product of precipitation from very dilute hydrothermal solutions that had passed through mafic to ultramafic volcanic rocks, stripping them of their iron, silica and other elements. Auention has been drawn 12] to the close similarity between the chemical composition of the Isua samples and those found in present-day deep-sea hydrothermal deposits, such as the Galapagos Mounds. Graphite occurs in the BIF sequence and in other sediments at Isua, and has led to speculations that it represents remains of organisms in existence at that time. ‘The extensive amphibolite-facies metamorphism at Isua effectively precludes preservation of primary organic matter [14]. In addition, it was suggested that hydrocarbons pyrolysed from Isua rocks were not primary biogenic compounds, but resulted from quite recent contamination with materials leached into the rocks from encrusting lichens. Carbon isotope measurements on graphite from Isua yields fractionation values of 13C somewhere between carbonate-C and biogenic graphite-C, which has been tenaciously interpreted for many years by Schidlowski [15, 16] to indicate the existence of a significant biomass by ~3.8 Gyr. It may be thal not all the observed C-isotope. variation in Isua rocks is attributable to metamorphic alteration, but Hayes et al. {17] consider that no definite conclusions about the original isotopic composition of Isua rocks can be drawn on account of their intense regional metamorphism. Dymek and Klein [12] have discussed alternative ways to form graphite in BIF using purely inorganic pathways. Similarly, the view that BIF may require photosynthetic (biogenic) ‘oxygen for their formation (18, 19] has been countered by purely inorganic, abiotic models [20,21]. Possibly both models are applicable for different BIF deposits. ‘The presence of fossils of cellular micro-organisms in [sua rocks likewise remains problematical, Cell-like inclusions were reporied in an Isua chert (22, 23] and idemtified as yeast-like microfossils, named Isuasphaera. Subsequently, doubt was cast