"How long does it take light to travel from the Sun to Earth, and what is the formula? (I would like to calculate the answer with my students.)"
-
Cyanobacterial Biomarkers in Ancient Rocks
September 19, 2008 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice
Members of NAI’s Penn State, Carnegie Institution, and MIT teams report in a recent issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the distribution of biomarkers in 2.72–2.56 billion-year-old, Neoarchean rocks from the Hamersley Province on the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. Their observations are consistent with a cyanobacterial source for 2-methylhopanes, in which cyanobacteria were likely the cornerstone of microbial communities in shallow-water ecosystems providing molecular oxygen, fixed carbon, and possibly fixed nitrogen.
Their data, revealing relative abundances of 3-methylhopanes, but not 2-methylhopanes, strongly correlate to stable carbon isotopic composition of insoluble particulate organic matter (kerogen). The unanticipated nature of this relationship provides evidence for a shallow-water locus of carbon cycling through aerobic oxidation of methane and, coincidentally, a means to demonstrate biomarker syngenicity.
- NAI Launches FAR Seminar Series on October 6th
- Early Earth Primed for Later RNA and DNA Production
- Molecules in the Atmospheres of Extrasolar Planets - A Workshop in Paris
- Cyanobacterial Biomarkers in Ancient Rocks
- Evolution of the Gut
- Jill Tarter and Will Wright Talk Gaming, Education, and Evolution in Seed Magazine's Video 'Salon'
- NASA Chooses MAVEN as the Next Mars Scout Mission
- NASA's Carl Sagan Fellows to Study Extraterrestrial Worlds
- Looking for Life on Mars in a Canadian Lake
- Mars Research in Polar Bear Country
