(Image: Kathleen Benison)
IN CLOSE-UP, they look like something out of a 1950s B-movie. Colonies of fossilised creatures, dubbed “hairy blobs”, have been discovered in one of the harshest environments on Earth. The find may turn out to be crucial for spotting signs of extraterrestrial life in rocks on other planets.
Kathleen Benison, a geologist at Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, led a team that studied the sediments formed by acidic and very salty lakes in modern day Western Australia, and those deposited around 250 million years ago in North Dakota. It is very difficult to survive in such a…
