Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, of Columbia University, said fossils may have been transported to the moon from Earth via meteorites.
He said: “It’s not inconceivable that there are fossil organisms in Earth meteorites on the lunar surface.
“In principle, the moon has this remarkable collection of detritus from its sister planet.”
He spoke after newly published research showed that oxygen from Earth had been found by a Japanese space probe on the moon.
Scientists believe the oxygen, detected by the SELENE spacecraft also known as Kaguya, could reveal a historical record of our planet’s ancient atmosphere.
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Most records of when our atmosphere formed have been lost on Earth due to geological activity.
Scientists believe the new discovery opt our oxygen on the moon could help is work out what happened in the Earth’s first two billion years and how we became oxygen rich.
The moon gets bombarded by highly charged particles from the sun through solar winds.
However, for five days each month the moon is shielded by Earth’s magnetosphere, which also protects us from solar storms.
In this window, slower oxygen ions from Earth hit the moon.
Scientists suspect they drifted over time from the outer layers of Earth’s atmosphere to become embedded in the moon’s regolith, a loose top layer of soil and rock.
Scientist Kentaro Terada of Osaka University in Japan led a team which reported the result s in Nature Astronomy.
He said: “Our new finding is a direct link that ions from Earth’s atmosphere are transported to the moon where they could remain in the lunar soils for billions of years.”
Oxygen on Earth, coupled with water and heat is why life formed.
It is needed in the process of photosynthesis in simple microbes.
About 2.45 billion years ago Earth’s atmosphere changed from oxygen-poor to oxygen-rich, and scientists still do not know why.
It is now thought some of that early atmospheric oxygen could be embedded in the moon.
Scientists next hope to collect and analyse samples of Earth oxygen in lunar soil.
This is why Mr Scharf, who was not involved in the research, believes tint fossilised microbes could also have travelled from Earth to the moon on meteors.