Recently in the Geobiology Category

Scientists have discovered that the earliest living organisms on Earth were capable of making a mineral that may be found on Mars.

The chemical reactions behind the formation of common metabolites in modern organisms could have formed spontaneously in the earth's early oceans, questioning the events thought to have led to the origin of life.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have published details about how the first organisms on Earth could have become metabolically active.

A study published this week in PLOS ONE authored by Dr. Henry Sun and his postdoctoral student Dr. Gaosen Zhang of Nevada based research institute DRI provides new evidence that Earth bacteria can do something that is quite unusual.

It might be the ugliest diamond you'll ever see, but within this brown sliver of carbon is a gem of a find for a University of Alberta scientist working to unravel an ocean-sized mystery deep beneath the Earth.

Favorable conditions for life on Earth are enabled in part by the natural shuttling of carbon dioxide from the planet's atmosphere to its rocky interior and back again.

The Sun was once thought to provide energy for all life on Earth - meaning that life could not survive without it. In the 20th century, as astrobiologists began to explore the Earth's most remote and harsh environments, scientists began to question that assumption.

With the help of a tiny fragment of zircon extracted from a remote rock outcrop in Australia, the picture of how our planet became habitable to life about 4.4 billion years ago is coming into sharper focus.

Astrobiologists supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute have shown that mineral species on the early Earth may have been different than the ones found on our planet today.

Microscopic fungi that live in plants' roots play a major role in the storage and release of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere.