paleo21-astropaleobiology

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Do we need to settle on a name for this discipline?  Exobiology has been
used for years for extraterrestrial life (and remains, as George Gaylord
Simpson once said, "A discipline that has yet to discover its subject").
Jack Farmer introduced Exopaleontology for the study of extraterrestrial
fossils a little while ago.  Now we have astropaleobiology and
astrobiology.  Do we need to be consistent?

What are viable strategies for the search for fossil ETs?  Must we wait for
materials to be returned from other places?  Farmer has been involved in
determining landing sites on Mars to search for fossils?  This I think is
based on the assumption that we should go for hydrothermophiles, as
explained in the Paleo21 Astropaleobiology paper.  The SETI project would
find only organisms capable of sending signals.  What about all the life
forms leading to that stage?  What other sites could be looked at, if we
assume that life evolved to a protist-like or early multicellular stage?
Such sites could be significantly different than where we might look for
bacteria-like fossils.  What else should we look for?  Organic walled
microfossils, for sure, but also perhaps skeletonized ones in the right
places.  Has planning gone beyond the prokaryotic stage but not as far at
the little green men stage?  Is there a strategic gap here that could be
closed at the same time as landings to search for prokaryotes?

 Are there more or better meteorites to look at?

What should students train in to be good exopaleobiologists?


Jere H. Lipps, Professor and Director
Department of Integrative Biology and
Museum of Paleontology
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720 USA

Voice:  510-642-9006.  Fax:  510-642-1822.
Internet:  jlipps@ucmp1.berkeley.edu
WWW:  http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/jlipps/jlipps.html