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Cyanobacterial Mat Features Preserved in the Siliciclastic Sedimentary Record

Paleodeserts and Modern Supratidal Flats

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Book cover From Fossils to Astrobiology

Part of the book series: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology ((COLE,volume 12))

Up till about 3,850 Ma, planet-sterilising impact events would have made Earth effectively inhospitable to life (Maher and Stevenson, 1988; Sleep et al, 1989). There is no record of the origin of life, but it can be assumed that it began on Earth under extreme conditions: very hot, only trace amounts to no oxygen, possibly saltier oceans than now, higher UV flux, but with a wide range of potential habitats for life, varying from subaerial to deep water conditions (Nisbet, 1995; Nisbet and Sleep, 2001; Westall, 2004). Cyanobacteria, inferred in the rock record from at least 3.5 Ga (Schopf, 2004), were the pioneering oxygenic phototrophs within this framework of early Earth’s evolution (Paerl et al., 2000 and references therein) and their further evolution was punctuated by critical biochemical transitions such as the oxygenic atmosphere, which many put at c. 2.3 Ga, others much earlier (cf., Ohmoto, 2004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Geology, Geowissenschaftliches Zentrum Göttingen, Universität Göttingen, Goldschmidtstrasse 3, D-37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Hubertus Porada

  2. Department of Geology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, 0002, South Africa

    Patrick G. Eriksson

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  1. Hubertus Porada
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  1. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

    Joseph Seckbach

  2. School of Plant, Environmental, and Soil Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Maud Walsh

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Porada, H., Eriksson, P.G. (2009). Cyanobacterial Mat Features Preserved in the Siliciclastic Sedimentary Record. In: Seckbach, J., Walsh, M. (eds) From Fossils to Astrobiology. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8837-7_9

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