South Africa already has the Cradle of Humankind‚ and now it can boast of being the cradle of some of the earliest life on Earth. Tiny bubble-like structures found in rock near Kuruman in the Northern Cape show life was thriving in the harshest of conditions billions of years ago. Fossils of the ancient bacteria date back 2.5-billion years‚ long before the planet’s atmosphere became rich in oxygen.

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