Abstract
This COLE volume describes and discusses the interaction of microbes with sediments since the earliest stromatolites were formed on Earth, around 3,500 Ma ago. One of the most significant areas of sedimentary research today in the Earth Sciences is the interaction of microbes with sediments, a topic that is fascinating, complex, rewarding, and enlightening. In the primordial ecosystems of the Archean, the changing environment gradually led to adaptations of early microbes that radically altered the terrestrial phylogenetic tree. Such complexity is entangled with the intrinsic difficulty of identifying truly reliable fossils from which we perhaps might be able to reconstruct the early steps in the origin of life on Earth and the pathway of its evolution. By fortuitous coincidence, this volume was initiated in 2008, the 100th anniversary of the term “stromatolith” (Kalkowsky, 1908).
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Seckbach, J., Tewari, V.C. (2011). Summary, Conclusions, and Future Prospects. In: Tewari, V., Seckbach, J. (eds) STROMATOLITES: Interaction of Microbes with Sediments. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0397-1_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0397-1_34
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