“People are really interested in when life on Earth first emerged,” John W. Valley, a professor of geoscience at University of Wisconsin-Madison and author on the study told said in a statement. “This study was 10 times more time-consuming and more difficult than I first imagined, but it came to fruition because of many dedicated people who have been excited about this since day one … I think a lot more microfossil analyses will be made on samples of Earth and possibly from other planetary bodies.”