accumulate and ultimately produce new traits in organisms .
In a completely different realm of science , in the world of paleontology , fossil evidence shows that life has existed for most of Earth ’ s history . Across the globe , in Western Australia , paleontologists have discovered that stromatolites , or layered rocks resulting from bacterial activity , and cyanobacteria fossils , have been determined to be 3.5 million years and 3.4 million years old , respectively . Other chemical tests suggest that life existed even before then .
older materials overall did not resemble the more current organisms as closely as the younger materials . This suggested to many scientists that the over time , the organisms changed .
Modern stromatolites are formed from cyanobacteria and trapped sediments . The buildup of these layers are found in Precambrian rocks and are some of the earliest known fossils .
Further evidence of evolution in the world of paleontology correlates with the methods used to date certain fossils - examining the age of rocks . In the early nineteenth century , scientists realized that fossils appear in layers of sedimentary rock , or rocks formed by the particles deposited by water , wind or ice . They noticed that the older material was deposited deeper in and toward the bottom of the sedimentary rock , whereas the more recent materials were deposited in layers above the older materials . The fossils in the
Next , evidence in the branch of biogeography , which deals with the geographic distribution of organisms , further supports evolution : take
31 VOGUE JUNE 2013