{"id":372864,"date":"2026-04-10T11:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/372864\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T11:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:33:11","slug":"first-contact-that-may-have-led-to-complex-life-on-earth-finally-witnessed-by-scientists-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/372864\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018First Contact\u2019 That May Have Led To Complex Life On Earth Finally Witnessed By Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\nFriday, 10 April 2026, 6:57 pm
Article: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Brendan
\nPaul Burns<\/a>, UNSW
\nSydney<\/a> and Kymberley
\nOakley<\/a>, Indigenous
\nKnowledge<\/a><\/p>\n

On the shores of the west
\ncoast of Australia lies a window to our past: the
\nstromatolites and microbial mats of Gathaagudu (Shark Bay).\n<\/p>\n

To the untrained eye they look like a collection
\nof rocks and slime \u2013 but they are in fact teeming with
\nmicrobial life. And these stromatolites are living
\n\u201crelics\u201d of ancient ecosystems that thrived on Earth
\nbillions of years ago. <\/p>\n

If you wade past, it feels
\nlike you\u2019re walking back through time. In fact, the first
\nbubbles of oxygen that filled the atmosphere on early Earth
\nlikely came from ancient
\nstromatolites<\/a>. You could say we owe our very existence
\nto these piles of rocks.<\/p>\n

So, what other secrets of
\nour past could these ecosystems tell us? Through decades of
\nresearch<\/a>,
\nwe know how early life has woven its path through these
\n\u201cliving rocks\u201d. But most recently our team embarked on
\nthe greatest genealogy search of them all: searching for our
\ngreat microbial ancestors, the Asgard archaea. <\/p>\n

Advertisement – scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n

And
\nin a new paper<\/a>,
\npublished today in the journal Current Biology, we
\nreport how this search led to the discovery of a key clue
\nthat could help explain how complex life evolved on Earth.\n<\/p>\n

\"Brown<\/a>
A field
\nof stromatolites in Shark Bay, Western Australia.
Brendan
\nBurns<\/p>\n

The cells that comprise complex
\nlife<\/p>\n

Asgard archaea were originally named after
\nNorse gods. This fascinating group of microbes sits on the
\ncusp of one of the most significant events in the evolution
\nof life: the origin of the complex cells that make up plants
\nand animals, known as eukaryotes.<\/p>\n

Evidence<\/a>
\nsuggests Asgard archaea are the closest relatives of
\neukaryotes. And that on an early Earth it was the
\n\u201cmarriage\u201d of an ancient Asgard archaeon and a bacterium
\nthat led to the first eukaryotes. <\/p>\n

They formed an
\nancient partnership. They shared resources and physically
\ninteracted, leading to the first complex cells. Like a Romeo
\nand Juliet tale of two distant families coming together,
\nAsgard archaea and bacteria decided it was time to break
\nfrom traditional family values. <\/p>\n

But we have never
\nseen a model of how this may have occurred. Until
\nnow.<\/p>\n

Holding up a mirror to the ancient
\npast<\/p>\n

Our team used the mats of Shark Bay as a
\n\u201cseed\u201d to establish cultures of these ancient microbes.
\nWe are one of only four groups worldwide to achieve this,
\nthrough years of research with a dedicated team of graduate
\nstudents nurturing the Asgards like offspring. <\/p>\n

But
\nthe Asgards were not alone. We found them together with a
\nsulphate-loving bacterium. Could this be a model of how
\ncomplex life may have started on a primitive Earth?\n<\/p>\n

We began by sequencing the Asgards\u2019 DNA to
\ndecipher exactly how these microbes tick at the genetic
\nlevel. We also used artificial intelligence to model how
\nproteins could have behaved in a world before eukaryotes.
\nEvidence suggested these two microbes were sharing
\nnutrients. In other words, they were cooperating.\n<\/p>\n

But we wanted to delve deeper. What do our great
\nmicrobial ancestors look like? Here we turned to electron
\ncryotomography, a high-resolution imaging approach that
\nallowed us to observe cells and structures at a nanometre
\nscale. <\/p>\n

And here we showed \u2013 for the first time
\n\u2013 an Asgard archaeon and a bacterium directly interacting.
\nTiny nanotubes were connecting the two organisms \u2013 perhaps
\nreflecting what their great-ancestors did on an early Earth
\nthat ultimately led to the explosion of complex life as we
\nknow it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Microbial mat from Gathaagudu (Shark Bay,
\nAustralia). Inset: Microscopic image showing Asgard archaeon
\nand bacterium derived from these mats interacting as a model
\nfor evolution of complex cells.
Iain
\nDuggin\/Bindusmita Paul\/Debnath Ghosal\/Matthew
\nJohnson\/Brendan Burns.<\/p>\n

Weaving western
\nscience with Indigenous knowledge<\/p>\n

This was a major
\ndiscovery \u2013 one that originated in Gathaagudu, a World
\nHeritage Site with significant environmental and cultural
\nvalues. <\/p>\n

Aboriginal people first inhabited
\nGathaagudu over 30,000
\nyears ago<\/a>. We wanted to recognise and celebrate the
\nlanguage of the Malgana people, one of the traditional
\nlanguage groups of Gathaagudu. We also wanted to connect
\nwestern science with Indigenous Knowledge in a meaningful
\nway.<\/p>\n

To this end and working closely with the
\nworld\u2019s foremost Malgana language expert, Kymberley
\nOakley, and Aboriginal elders, a name was granted for our
\nnovel Asgard archaeon from the language of the Malgana
\npeople: Nerearchaeum marumarumayae. The species
\nname \u2013 marumarumayae \u2013 is derived from the
\nAboriginal language of the Malgana people, meaning
\n\u201cancient home\u201d, a reference to stromatolites being of
\nancient origin in Earth\u2019s history. <\/p>\n

Weaving
\nAboriginal language into the naming of our new microbe
\nrepresents a fitting connection between unique Aboriginal
\nculture in Australia and the ancient microbe discovered that
\ncalls the mats of Gathaagudu \u201chome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gathaagudu
\nis under threat from global
\nchange<\/a>, from increased heatwaves, cyclonic events and
\nhuman activity. And among the values to preserve and
\nconserve are the significant Aboriginal connections as well
\nas the trails of life going back through evolutionary time.\n<\/p>\n

With our study we have peered into our past. And
\nmaybe like the Montagues and Capulets of Shakespeare, we see
\ndistant families of microbes coming together to bridge the
\ndivide and ultimately form the early eukaryotes that
\neventually led to us: a fragile branch on the evolutionary
\ntree of life.\"The<\/p>\n

Brendan
\nPaul Burns<\/a>, Associate Professor, School of Biotech &
\nBiomolecular Science, UNSW
\nSydney<\/a> and Kymberley
\nOakley<\/a>, Indigenous language expert, Indigenous
\nKnowledge<\/a><\/p>\n

This article is
\nrepublished from The
\nConversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the
\noriginal
\narticle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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