Recently in the Geobiology Category

Dust plays a crucial role in the life and health of our planet. In our modern world, dust-borne nutrients traveling in great dust storms from the Saharan Desert fertilize the soil in the Amazon Rainforest and feed photosynthetic organisms like algae in the Atlantic Ocean. In turn, it is those organisms that breathe in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen.

Researchers supported in part by the Exobiology Program have provided new information about the oxygenation history of the Earth's oceans during the mid-Proterozoic using uranium (U) isotope data.

The remains of a microscopic drop of ancient seawater has assisted in rewriting the history of Earth's evolution when it was used to re-establish the time that plate tectonics started on the planet.

The longevity of Earth's continents in the face of destructive tectonic activity is an essential geologic backdrop for the emergence of life on our planet.

By acting as gatekeepers, microbes can affect geological processes that move carbon from the earth's surface into its deep interior, according to a study published in Nature and coauthored by microbiologists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Microscopic plant-like organisms called phytoplankton are known to support the diversity of life in the ocean.

inds of many evolutionary biologists, the continents were irrelevant early in the Earth's history, because they are assumed to have been barren of life until the first plants appeared, around 0.4 billion years ago.

The amount of biomass -- life -- in Earth's ancient oceans may have been limited due to low recycling of the key nutrient phosphorus, according to new research by the University of Washington and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Reservoirs of oxygen-rich iron between the Earth's core and mantle could have played a major role in Earth's history, including the breakup of supercontinents, drastic changes in Earth's atmospheric makeup, and the creation of life, according to recent work from an international research team published in National Science Review.

ANU scientists say the early Earth was likely to be barren, mountainless and almost entirely under water with a few small islands, following their analysis of tiny mineral grains as old as 4.4 billion years.