Abstract
When and how life on Earth started is still an open question. Biochemical fingerprints stored in the ancient rock record indicate the presence of traces of life back to some of the oldest sedimentary rocks on the planet. The Earth has thus harboured life throughout most of its geologic history, and biological processes have contributed significantly to sha** the environmental conditions on the surface of the planet. Tracking the nature of ancient life using morphological, mineralogical, chemical and isotopic proxies in the rock record on Earth needs, however, to surmount a number of obstacles. Most important are the effects of post-depositional alteration of the sedimentary host rocks due to exposure to metamorphic temperatures and pressures and metasomatism during the protracted time before their present exposure. Diagenetic and metamorphic overprints may have resulted in recrystallisation of the original mineral assemblages and deformation of the original textural features in the sedimentary rocks, in many cases blurring the biologic signatures and jeopardizing the reliable interpretation of the nature of the lifeform.
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Lepland, A. et al. (2013). 7.8 Traces of Life. In: Melezhik, V., et al. Reading the Archive of Earth’s Oxygenation. Frontiers in Earth Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29670-3_8
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