It must be an issue of a bad translation. This piece could be a formation of stromatolites (deposits of cyanobacteria, that one could call maybe "algae"), tough is hard to tell and looks like different to usual pieces of stromatolites seen in museums etc. But... stromatolites, first fossil evidence of life on Earth, appeared 3500 million years ago. Absolutely far from a billion years, when Universe didn't ever existed.
@Kakapo - I think you need to re-evaluate your opinion on the age of the Universe!
I have no idea what species this particular fossil represents but certainly there are fossils of algae or algae-like life-forms dated from between one and two billion years of age.
@Chlidonias Why? According to Wikipedia and any other source, Big Bang happened about 13800 million years ago. That's a very small period compared with a billion years (a billion is 1000000 millions)
@Kakapo - yes, that is 13.8 billion years. The short-scale billion (i.e. 1000,000,000) is now the standard use of billion, and has always been the usage in the USA. The long-scale billion (i.e. 1000 times longer than the short-scale billion) is basically now a historical usage. It may be the case that Spain still uses the long-scale billion, but almost all scientific usages are now in the short-scale.
two different usages of billion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now all makes sense. I never in my entire life was aware of the use of "billion" for just only a thousand of millions!!!!!!! Maybe the USA is different, but in Europe as far as I know, the word never had any other significance than a million of millions. Is not that "we still use the long-scale" but that "never has been used any other scale than the long", and certainly I never knew about a different scale. Must be a case similar to the centimeters/inches system, tough muuuuch less known... I will ask today to my father (he knows everything, hehe) for ensure myself that the word billion can be correctly used for the 100th part of a billion.
Remembered this thread and decided to investigate about it. You're completely right Chli: in English, currently, a billion is understood as 1000 millions. In the remaining languages, a billion is a million of millions, with some exceptions such as Russian.
