Pilbara team searches for dawn of life

A team of 31 international researchers are currently exploring Western Australia's Pilbara region for signs of the earliest life on earth.

Postgraduate geology and astronomy students from the Netherlands’ Free University of Amsterdam and Leiden University are participating in the 12-day Eendracht Expedition, named after the ship in which Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog first explored the Western Australian coast.

The expedition is being led by Paleontology Specialist Dr Kath Grey, from the Department of Industry and Resources’ Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA), and University of California Professor Stanley Awramik.

The team will explore modern stromatolites at Shark Bay and fossil stromatolites in the Pilbara aged up to 3.5 billion years old, to gain an insight into the factors that gave rise to these early life-forms as well as the conditions necessary to support life on other planets.

GSWA Director Tim Griffin said WA was well placed to take advantage of the European Union’s increasing capacity for scientific research, including its interest in space exploration and evidence of life in space through the European Space Agency.

“WA’s Precambrian fossils are remarkably well preserved when compared with fossils of a similar age in Europe,” Dr Griffin said.

“The State also has the physical resources and knowledge base necessary to support large delegations of international researchers.”

He said WA was one of the most significant regions in the world for stromatolite research.

“Stromatolites are essential to understanding of the origins of life because they are the most common fossils in Precambrian rocks, which are those older than 543 million years,” Dr Griffin said.

“Because of the vast areas of Precambrian rocks in Western Australia, the Geological Survey has pioneered methods of using fossil stromatolites to correlate rocks that are otherwise difficult to date.”

Free University of Amsterdam student Marineus den Hartogh is participating in the Eendracht Expedition as part of his petroleum geology studies and said WA had significant advantages over places such as Norway, where he had previously conducted research.

“These fossils are preserved here like no other place on Earth,” he said.

“Because it’s a desert-like environment, you don’t have the vegetation or human interference of other areas so the fossils are quite easy to study.”

Before setting off on 6 June, expedition participants were given a tour of the GSWA Core Library at Carlisle, which archives drill-core samples and other materials acquired during mineral and petroleum exploration in WA.

The expedition will make several stops on its round-trip journey between Perth and the Pilbara, including the Gravity Wave Discovery Centre in Gin Gin and Duck Creek Gorge near Pannawonica.

Students from Perth’s Curtin University and the University of Western Australia are also taking part in the expedition.