Michaela Dobson: Life is everywhere in Hot Spring Rocks

Hot springs are extreme, dynamic, inhospitable environments that create alien looking rocks. It is hard to believe that microbes are thriving in these strange ecosystems. My research looks at hot springs rocks as way to search for life on early Earth and possible past life of Mars. What we find is that when you get down to the micron scale of the rock, fossilised life is everywhere! This is important, as it suggests that if we find similar looking hot spring deposits on Mars, then these might be evidence for past life on the red planet.