Séminaire ISTerre

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Investigating early life on Earth and beyond: Insights of synchrotron X-ray imaging

mercredi 11 mai 2022 - 10h00

Lara Maldanis - ISTerre
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Unveiling ancient microbial biosignatures is crucial for both reconstructing the history of life on Earth, and also for guiding the search of past life on other planets, such as Mars. This task, however, is challenged by the micrometric size of these structures, the fossilization and the diagenesis processes that altered these structures during billions of years. I will present how we combine different state-of-art synchrotron X-ray methods to obtain multiscale chemical and morphological information of putative fossil microorganisms. By obtaining an insight into the ancient biochemistry and environmental composition, we can also understand how these structures were preserved and where they could be found. Ultimately, it can also allow us to develop approaches for unambiguously identifying the earliest signs of life on Earth and possibly applying them to Mars. In the context of the samples that will be returned from Mars in the near future, I will present how we are trying to understand potentially preserved microorganisms in 2 Myr acidic deposits from Rio Tinto, Spain, considered as one of the geochemical and mineralogical terrestrial analogues of Mars terrains.

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Equipe organisatrice : Organisation labo

Amphithéâtre Killian, Maison des Géosciences, 38400 Saint Martin d'Hères

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