Astrobiology don't you know… sort of
Most people prefer a good Tyrannosaur to a lowly duck. It’s a matter of choice of course, but when thinking about dinosaurs you probably have visions of ruthless predators with teeth the size of meat cleavers, or titanic herbivores bigger than small buildings, whereas ducks tend to float around in ponds inquiring after handfuls of bread.
However palaeontologists and biologists have revealed evidence that the humble duck may have triumphed over the mighty dinosaurs.
In two previous posts I’ve looked at different versions of panspermia, the idea that life may have originated elsewhere in our Galaxy and may have travelled to our planet early in its formation, giving rise to all of the life we see on Earth today.
In post 1 I introduced the idea, and looked at how simple bacterial life could travel to the Earth, and in post 2 I looked at some more extreme versions of panspermia, including the idea that intelligent aliens could have deliberately seeded the Earth with life.
You may have also seen in the news recently that a NASA scientist called Richard Hoover has claimed he has found fossilized bacteria in a number of meteorites.
What does this mean for panspermia? Unfortunately, probably not much. Find out why…
A recent paper reports the exciting news that a new pterosaur fossil has been found in China (by a farmer), there’s been quite a bit of media coverage of this find over the last few days, but why the excitement? And what actually is a pterosaur? And why would you want to sex one?
Astrobioloblog 