Life on earth began in Australia or so it may be:

Scientists have discovered possibly the earliest signs of life on Earth – remains of bacteria that are almost three-and-a-half billion years old – in a remote region of north-west Australia.

Evidence of the complex microbial ecosystem was found in sedimentary rocks in the remote Pilbara region in Western Australia, an area which contains some of the world’s oldest rock formations.

One of the researchers, David Wacey, from the University of Western Australia, said the newly-discovered evidence of bacteria ‘was possibly the oldest signs of life on Earth’.

‘There was plenty of life from the 3.4 and 3.43 billion-year-old mark – this is pushing it further back,’ he told The Telegraph.

‘There are slightly older claims of life in rocks in Greenland – but the rocks there have been so deformed that it is very difficult to tell if what you are seeing was actually there in the first place. With these microbial systems in the Pilbara, you can see these things in the field and under the microscope. You can see how the bacteria were interacting with the sediment they were living on.’