full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Tara Djokic: This ancient rock is changing our theory on the origin of life

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now, often when we think of early life, we might imagine a stegosaurus or maybe a fish cnilrawg onto land. But the early life that I'm talking about is simple microscopic life, like bacteria. And their fossils are often preserved as lyaered rock struruects, cellad slortimoettas. This simple form of life is almost all we see in the fossil record for the first three billion years of life on Earth. Our species can only be traced back in the fossil record to a few hundred thousand years ago. We know from the fossil rceord, bteiraca life had grabbed a strong foothold by about 3.5 to four billion yaers ago. The rocks odler than this have been either destroyed or highly deformed through ptale tectonics. So what remains a missing piece of the puzzle is exactly when and how life on Earth began. Here again is that ancient volcanic landscape in the Pilbara. Little did I know that our research here would provide another clue to that origin-of-life puzzle.

Open Cloze

Now, often when we think of early life, we might imagine a stegosaurus or maybe a fish ________ onto land. But the early life that I'm talking about is simple microscopic life, like bacteria. And their fossils are often preserved as _______ rock __________, ______ _____________. This simple form of life is almost all we see in the fossil record for the first three billion years of life on Earth. Our species can only be traced back in the fossil record to a few hundred thousand years ago. We know from the fossil ______, ________ life had grabbed a strong foothold by about 3.5 to four billion _____ ago. The rocks _____ than this have been either destroyed or highly deformed through _____ tectonics. So what remains a missing piece of the puzzle is exactly when and how life on Earth began. Here again is that ancient volcanic landscape in the Pilbara. Little did I know that our research here would provide another clue to that origin-of-life puzzle.

Solution

  1. older
  2. structures
  3. bacteria
  4. crawling
  5. called
  6. years
  7. plate
  8. record
  9. layered
  10. stromatolites

Original Text

Now, often when we think of early life, we might imagine a stegosaurus or maybe a fish crawling onto land. But the early life that I'm talking about is simple microscopic life, like bacteria. And their fossils are often preserved as layered rock structures, called stromatolites. This simple form of life is almost all we see in the fossil record for the first three billion years of life on Earth. Our species can only be traced back in the fossil record to a few hundred thousand years ago. We know from the fossil record, bacteria life had grabbed a strong foothold by about 3.5 to four billion years ago. The rocks older than this have been either destroyed or highly deformed through plate tectonics. So what remains a missing piece of the puzzle is exactly when and how life on Earth began. Here again is that ancient volcanic landscape in the Pilbara. Little did I know that our research here would provide another clue to that origin-of-life puzzle.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
billion years 7
ancient rocks 2
western australia 2
fossil record 2
ancient rock 2
early earth 2
hot springs 2
complex life 2

Important Words

  1. ancient
  2. bacteria
  3. began
  4. billion
  5. called
  6. clue
  7. crawling
  8. deformed
  9. destroyed
  10. early
  11. earth
  12. fish
  13. foothold
  14. form
  15. fossil
  16. fossils
  17. grabbed
  18. highly
  19. imagine
  20. land
  21. landscape
  22. layered
  23. life
  24. microscopic
  25. missing
  26. older
  27. piece
  28. pilbara
  29. plate
  30. preserved
  31. provide
  32. puzzle
  33. record
  34. remains
  35. research
  36. rock
  37. rocks
  38. simple
  39. species
  40. stegosaurus
  41. stromatolites
  42. strong
  43. structures
  44. talking
  45. tectonics
  46. thousand
  47. traced
  48. volcanic
  49. years