Emergence of Life
Main content
Project name
“Investigating the Emergence of Life on Earth 3+ billion years ago”
funded by Bergen Research Foundation and the University of Bergen
Principal investigator
Researchers involved
at CGB: Nicola McLoughlin, Harald Furnes, Eugene Grosch, Jan Kosler, Ingunn Thorseth, 1 postdoc and 2 PhD students (to be hired)
elsewhere: Hubert Staudigel (UCSD), David Wacey (UWA), Matt Kilburn (UWA), Crispin Little (Leeds).
Project period
Jan 2011-Dec 2014
Project's main Objectives:
Planet Earth is ~4.6 billion years old but what is less clear is when it first became home to life. Learning more about the earliest microbial ecosystems is crucial to understanding how geobiological processes have shaped our own, and perhaps other, rocky planets. Questions concerning the origins of life and our place in the universe are fundamental to both modern science and society. Yet surprisingly, there is little or no scientific consensus about when, and where, life first emerged on earth. The early rock record holds the answers to these questions, but is sparse and fragmentary, with traces of life often being highly altered, and hotly contested.
This project will develop new biogeochemical tools to examine some of the world's oldest, well-preserved rocks collected by our scientific drilling program in South Africa. The Barberton Scientific drill cores provide a high-quality, near continuous record from an interval of geological time called the Archean, when life is believed to have first emerged on earth. Investigations of our unique drill core will be combined with laboratory experiments to study the effects of geological processes on the preservation of micro-organisms in deep time. These experiments will use material collected from natural geomicrobial laboratories in the present day North Atlantic established by the Center for Geobiology in Bergen. This research initiative will be led by Dr Nicola McLoughlin who will assemble a team to develop novel approaches to better characterize the nature and habitat of the earliest life on earth. A key outcome will be the improvement of criteria used to seek life beyond earth, especially on Mars.