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Solving the Controversy of Earth's Oldest Fossils using Electron Microscopy

Filamentous microstructures in 3.46 billion-year-old rocks (Apex chert) from Western Australia have been claimed to represent the oldest morphological evidence of life on Earth [1]. However, the biological nature of these filaments has been questioned on numerous occasions [e.g., 2] and this has led to one of the longest running and most controversial debates in palaeontology. Here we use a combination of focused ion beam (FIB) milling, TEM and SEM to decode the detailed morphology and chemistry of the Apex filaments and determine their formation mechanism.