ENGLISH

Early Life on Earth: A Practical Guide

By M. D. Brasier (auth.) , David Wacey (eds.)

Book information

Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Year
2009
ISBN
1402093888, 9781402093883
DOI
10.1007/978-1-4020-9389-0
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
16 MB (16525813 bytes)
Series
Topics in Geobiology 31
Edition
1
Pages
274\265
Topic
Geology
Scanned
no
Time added
2010-02-18 13:16:04
Biogeosciences; Astrobiology; Paleontology; Biochegeneral; Geochemistry

Description

When did life first appear on Earth and what form did it take? The answer to this intriguing and fundamentally important question lies somewhere within the early Archean rock record. The young Earth was, however, a very different place to that we know today and numerous pitfalls await our interpretation of these most ancient rocks. The first half of this practical guide equips the reader with the background knowledge to successfully evaluate new potentially biological finds from the Archean rock record. Successive steps are covered, from locating promising samples in the field, through standard petrography and evaluation of antiquity and biogenicity criteria, to the latest state of the art geochemical techniques. The second half of the guide uniquely brings together all the materials that have been claimed to comprise the earliest fossil record into an easily accessible, fully illustrated format. This will be a handbook that every Archean geologist, palaeobiologist and astrobiologist will wish to have in their backpack or on their lab-bench.

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2010 · PDF