Life is shaped by the environment in which it lives. When looking at an organism today, that relationship can be easily observed. But when all you’re left with is a fossil or rock, it can be tricky to identify the environment in which it formed, let alone the life forms that might have left their mark in that sample. Geobiologist Tanja Bosak now faces additional challenges as she searches for signs of early life on Mars.
Scientists first need to backtrack what Mars might have been like in the past, and then what life might be expected in those conditions. This requires taking into account the different kinds of rocks and atmosphere seen on our neighboring planet today — and then estimating whether these aspects were the same billions of years ago. “It’s just a completely new, bigger direction,” she says.
A physicist during her undergraduate years in Croatia, Bosak was interested in big systems. After a brief stint as a meteorologist, she found the perfect field during...
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