Ancient Organisms Discovered in Canadian Gold Mine

Scientists have suspected that the three known domains of life — eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea — branched off and went their separate ways around three billion years ago. But pinning down the time of that split has been an elusive task. Now, a team of scientists present direct evidence that the three domains of life coexisted at least as long as 2.7 billion years ago. The discovery came from chemical examination of shale samples, loaded with oily lipid remains of archaea found in a deep Canadian gold mine near Timmins, Ontario, about 400 miles north of Toronto