Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/Z504385/1
The Hidden Majority: Reading and Writing the Bacterial Fossil Record
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Dr S H McMahon, University of Edinburgh, Sch of Geosciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor BT Ngwenya, University of Edinburgh, Sch of Geosciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Edinburgh, Sch of Geosciences
- Science Area:
- None
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- None
- Science Topics:
- None
- Abstract:
- Bacteria rule the Earth. Over billions of years, these fantastically diverse and abundant organisms have established and maintained Earth's nutrient cycles, infused the oceans and atmosphere with oxygen, and formed, shaped and weathered rocks and minerals. Even today, they are the true foundation of our biosphere. But fossil bacteria are tiny, ambiguous, often poorly preserved, and therefore challenging to study. Now, for the first time, new technology is beginning to reveal their secrets. Advances by our research group and others provide tantalising new data about the structure and make-up of fossil bacteria, but the interpretation of these data is vexed by uncertainties about the processes of decay and mineralization (fossilization) that ultimately produced them. Our work to decode fossil bacteria will reduce these uncertainties and thereby advance major debates about the origins of important groups and their relationships to key events in Earth's history. Firstly, by showing experimentally how selected, ecologically important groups of bacteria are broken down and replaced or encrusted by minerals in the laboratory (making "artificial fossils"), we will discover new clues that palaeontologists can use to recognise these groups in the fossil record. This in turn will advance the study of ancient ecosystems and environments. Secondly, we will combine these experimental insights with sophisticated chemical microscopy to update our understanding of some of the best preserved fossil bacteria known to science, which occur in the Rhynie chert in Scotland. These world-famous rocks open a spectacular window onto life on land 400 million years ago, including some of the oldest well preserved land plants and diverse bacteria. We will conduct a high-resolution census of Rhynie chert bacterial diversity, testing hypotheses about microbial life during the greening of the land. For example, many of the filament-shaped bacteria have been identified as (oxygen-making) cyanobacteria, but our knowledge of modern spring communities predicts that diverse non-cyanobacterial filaments should also be present, playing different, potentially important, ecological roles. Thirdly, we will address an apparent billion-year discrepancy in the fossil record of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, helping to constrain the history of Earth's atmosphere. The rise of oxygen forced some cyanobacteria to evolve specialised cells (heterocysts) for nitrogen fixation in aerobic conditions. The timing of this consequential innovation is poorly understood: heterocystous cyanobacteria also produce distinctive resting cells (akinetes), but the oldest purported fossil akinetes pre-date by ~1 billion years the oldest known heterocysts (e.g., those in the Rhynie chert). Because these different cell types differ fundamentally, they should decay and preserve quite differently. We will test whether differences in preservation potential can solve the puzzle of the missing heterocysts in the fossil record: perhaps they are older than they seem. This project will create fundamental new knowledge of ancient bacteria and new methods for studying them, opening a new frontier in palaeontology. Our findings will engage bio- and geo-scientists through multidisciplinary journals and conferences, and will have implications for the discovery and analysis of Earth's oldest fossils, the search for life on Mars, and the co-evolution of life and Earth through deep time. We will engage non-specialists in the UK and beyond through public talks, school visits and resources, work with Rockwatch (the club and magazine for young UK rockhounds), a new "fossil bacteria" article for Wikipedia, one of the world's most viewed websites (which provides pageview data), and press releases.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/Z504385/1
- Grant Stage:
- Awaiting Offer Acceptance
- Scheme:
- Research Grants
- Grant Status:
- Authorised
- Programme:
- Pushing the Frontiers
This grant award has a total value of £487,101
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - T&S | DA - Other Directly Allocated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £37,643 | £176,087 | £59,591 | £64,308 | £138,883 | £6,807 | £3,782 |
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