A human can't even conceive of how long a length of time that is. 

The good thing about climate change: New discoveries.

In a newly melted part of Greenland, Australian scientists found the leftover structure from a community of microbes that lived on an ancient seafloor, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature .

The discovery shows life may have formed quicker and easier than once thought, about half a billion years after Earth formed . And that may also give hope for life forming elsewhere, such as Mars, said study co-author Martin VanKranendonk of the University of New South Wales and director of the Australian Center for Astrobiology.

"It gives us an idea how our planet evolved and how life gained a foothold," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists had thought it would take at least half a billion years for life to form after the molten Earth started to cool a bit, but this shows it could have happened quicker, he said. That's because the newly found fossil is far too complex to have developed soon after the planet's first life forms, he said.

Mind blowing and reminds me of these two facts.

1. We now know the size of the universe.

http://pandawhale.com/post/72906/it-took-centuries-but-we-now-know-the-size-of-the-universe

2. Earth could contain nearly a trillion species.

http://pandawhale.com/post/71953/earth-could-contain-nearly-1-trillion-species-with-only-one-thousandth-of-1-percent-now-identified