β All time stops
The First Life
3.5 billion years ago β tiny living specks
Jump into a time machine and travel back billions of years to meet your tiniest ancestors!
1/5
- 3.5 Billion Years Ago
A Strange Warm Ocean
Earth was mostly dark water and stormy skies. There were no trees, bugs, or animals anywhere yet!
The big idea
Life started super small in warm oceans, and those tiny microbes changed our whole planet forever.
Fun facts
- β¨ Some of the oldest fossil clues look like giant layered rock pancakes called stromatolites!
- β¨ Microbes were the only living things on Earth for over a billion years.
- β¨ You still have trillions of tiny microbes living happily inside your body right now!
Science words
- Microbe β A creature so tiny you can only see it with a powerful microscope.
- Fossil β A rock shape left behind by ancient living things.
- Oxygen β The invisible gas in the air that we need to breathe.