Pools in the Mexican desert are a window into Earth’s early life

Amazing stuff!

"The landscape—more than 300 turquoise-blue pozas scattered across 800 square kilometers, among marshes and majestic mountains ... The waters, whose chemistry resembled that of Earth’s ancient seas, teemed with microbes; unusual bacterial mats and formations called stromatolites carpeted the shallows. ... that Cuatro Ciénegas—which means “four marshes” in Spanish—is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. “There’s nowhere that has so much ancient diversity of microorganisms,” ... Among the most recent additions to that menagerie are hundreds of species of archaea, the ancient microbes that may have given rise to eukaryotes—organisms with complex, nucleated cells."

Pools in the Mexican desert are a window into Earth’s early life | Science | AAAS