Chemical Fossils Preserved in Lava Reveal Remains of Ancient Sea Life [Scientific American Magazine]
Adorf, Germany--After a five-hour drive south from the University of Bremen that got them in at half-past midnight, the two researchers visiting this small village were happy to sit and talk with tavern patrons about the volcano just up the street. Gathered around a map, they listened intently as geobiologists Joern Peckmann and Benjamin Eickmann pointed to the extinct volcano, Arnstein Hill, and explained that the forested region had been underwater 400 million years ago, during the Devonian. Flooded lands were something these German townsfolk could relate to. The completion of the Edersee Dam in 1914 put the neighboring village of Asel at the bottom of a lake.Peckmann and his students are investigating chemical fossils from the interior of seafloor basalts--solidified lava--from the Devonian. Peckmann, who first reported the findings in March, believes that they have uncovered a previously unknown niche for microbial life, “one that existed in the past, occurs in the present and has the potential to have existed since the beginning of Earth’s history,” he says. The work could also contribute to investigations of possible fossils in Martian basalt. [More]