Project Progress
Throughout biologic history, microbe-level life has been ubiquitous, abundant, metabolically diverse, and for the earliest (Precambrian) seven-eighths of geological time, biotically predominant. Understanding of this earliest stage of biologic development has progressed markedly in past decades, but problems of interpreting the preserved fossil record still remain. Perhaps foremost among such problems is the difficulty of unambiguously distinguishing true microbial biologic remnants from nonbiologic (e.g., mineralic) look-alikes. This problem can be addressed by demonstrating in objects claimed to be microscopic fossils a one-to-one correlation, in three dimensions and at a micron scale, of preservable "biological morphology" with geochemically altered "biological chemistry." We have now developed two non-destructive, non-intrusive techniques, both new to paleobiology/astrobiology, that meet this need:
Applicable to samples returned to Earth from other planets, the use of these new techniques can be expected to revolutionize studies of microbial Precambrian life.
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