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
- older
- structures
- bacteria
- crawling
- called
- years
- plate
- record
- layered
- 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
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billion years |
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ancient rocks |
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western australia |
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fossil record |
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ancient rock |
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early earth |
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hot springs |
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complex life |
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Important Words
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- deformed
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- early
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- fish
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- fossil
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- life
- microscopic
- missing
- older
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- pilbara
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- rock
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- simple
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- stegosaurus
- stromatolites
- strong
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- talking
- tectonics
- thousand
- traced
- volcanic
- years