Scientists say they have found confirmation of life on Earth as a minimum 4.1 billion years ago which means life began soon after the planet was formed. Earlier, scientists depicted that the Earth was dry and dead in that period.

Mark Harrison,a geochemist at the University of California Los Angeles and a co-author of the research said, “Twenty years ago, this would have been heretical; finding evidence of life 3.8 billion years ago was shocking. Life on the Earth may have started almost instantaneously with the right ingredients; life seems to form very quickly”.

According to a research published in the journal of theNational Academy of Sciences, it revealed that life existed before a gigantic bombardment of the internal solar system that formed the Earth’s natural satellitebulky craters 3.9 billion years ago.

Elizabeth Bell, a postdoctoral scholar in Harrison’s laboratory, along with the researchers studied around 10,000 zircons which were naturally formed from molten rocks, or magmas from Western Australia. In the research scientists analyzed around 79 zircons with Raman spectroscopy.

Bell and Boehner after determining the condition of ancient zircons were looking for carbon which is the key element of life. One of the zircons had two bits of pure carbon which predicted that carbon existed ever since the zircon formed i.e. 4.1 billion years ago, Harrison added.

Simple life on the Earth seemed to have formed quickly, but it took millions of years for it to develop the ability to photosynthesis.