And if this is confirmed, both the age and the fact that it’s a fossil, it’s really, really, REALLY old:

Earliest evidence of life on Earth ‘found’

These “fossils” aren’t of recognizable critters, but hematite filaments, which are the traces of life. The age is somewhere between 3.77 billion and 4.28 billion years.. If it’s on the older end, it’s really rather astonishing; the theorized collision of the early Earth with the hypothetical planet Theia, resulting in the creation of the Moon, is believed to have occurred about 4.5 billion years ago. This collision would have turned the entire surface of the planet into liquid hot magma, so it seems life *could* have arisen less than a quarter billion years after the Earth was a molten ball of fire.