Paleontologist: It is widely, but falsely, held that life began in the ocean and did not exist on land until half a billion years ago  Traces of carbon 14 have been found throughout certain 1  2-billion-year-old rock in North America
Carbon 14 is extracted by plants and microbes from the atmosphere to fuel their chemical reactions, and is then released when the plants and microbes die
Research suggests that some portions of the 1. 2-billion-year-old rocks were at one time submerged in water, though portions clearly never were.