stromatolites

Perseverance rover’s search for life on Mars: from the outback to the red planet

19 Feb 2021

As NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars, UNSW is playing a key role in the search for life on the red planet. In July 2019, Professor Martin Van Kranendonk took a team of NASA and European Space Agency scientists to the Pilbara, in the Western Australian outback.

Stromatolites - fossils of earliest life on Earth - may owe existence to viruses

19 Feb 2021

As the Mars Rover sets out to look for evidence of life on another planet, scientists back on Earth suggest viruses played a key role in creating stromatolites, our planet’s earliest lifeforms.

Ancient microbial life used arsenic to thrive in a world without oxygen

29 Sep 2020

How ancient microbes survived in a world without oxygen has been a mystery. Scientists discovered a living microbial mat that uses arsenic instead of oxygen for photosynthesis and respiration.

Luke Steller teaching students how to find fossils

Ancient signs of life: inspiring the next generation of scientists in the outback

30 Jul 2020

As Perseverance prepares to launch for Mars, two UNSW PhD students look back on a field trip that gave Indigenous high school students a behind-the-scenes look at the rover’s upcoming mission.

Earliest signs of life: scientists find microbial remains in ancient rocks

26 Sep 2019

Western Australia’s famous 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites contain microbial remains of some of the earliest life on Earth, UNSW scientists have found.

NASA and European Space Agency join UNSW in outback for training crucial for Mars 2020 missions

02 Sep 2019

UNSW scientists have shown a group of Mars specialists the secrets of the remote Pilbara's ancient rocks - all in preparation for NASA's and ESA's Mars 2020 missions.

Australian researchers discover oldest evidence of life on Earth

01 Sep 2016

Australian researchers have found fossils dating back 3.7 billion years in a remote area of Greenland, demonstrating that life emerged rapidly during the planet’s early history.

Life on Earth began much earlier: new research

03 Jun 2008

New studies, by UNSW researchers, of the world's most primitive living things suggest that life on Earth may have begun much earlier than the accepted date of about 3.5 billion years ago.