Life Began in Canada

We all know that Canada is a great country that for the last 150 years contributed to the world with many activities, sports, inventions, etc. Recent discoveries, by a team from the University College London (ULC) in the UK, after collecting rocks from the Nuvvuagittuq formation along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, could now reveal that life began in Canada as far back as 4.28 billion years ago.

The leading theory is that the first life on Earth formed around nutrient-rich hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean as tiny microorganisms. The Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB) in Northern Quebec, one of the oldest known rock formations on earth, was one of these ancient vents that once spilled lava onto the seafloor.

Does that mean everyone in the world is actually a Canadian? The discovery of the origins of life on Earth in our backyard means we as Canadians can be proud we have the means to help explain the origins of life. According to Earth scientist Dominic Papineau from ULC, the discovery of nanoscopic haematite fossils from vent deposits will help us piece together the history of our planet and the remarkable life on it, and will help to identify traces of life elsewhere in the universe.

Whether on this planet, or on the seafloors of planets or moons elsewhere in the universe, this discovery indicates that prime places for life to emerge would be found in any environment with warm, watery, mineral-rich neighborhoods around submerged thermos vents. With the universe being so vast with trillions of planets, of many that have underwater thermal venting, the odds would suggest that we are not alone in the universe.

With planet Earth being a little more than 4.5 billion years old, and life sparked on earth 4.28 billion years ago, also indicates that life can develop quickly (in geological terms) on a planet soon after the calming of violent geological formation. There are so many planetoid objects in space that are so much older than Earth that have very similar conditions, it could be this century, with all our advances in understanding life, that we will discover our planetary neighbours.