'New' fossil pushes back date of first known life
| Los Angeles
The earliest form of life found on earth, dating back 3.5 billion years, has been discovered embedded in a rock brought from Western Australia, the University of California at Los Angeles announced Tuesday. The rock revealed the fossilized marks of a microbial community, made up of tiny bacterialike cells. The discovery pushes back by 400 million years the date of the earliest known biological life.