She made her name identifying the earliest accepted proof of life on Earth. Now NASA is counting on her to repeat the trick.
From 2003 to 2005, when Abigail Allwood was a graduate student in earth science at Macquarie University, in Australia, she made a series of remarkable discoveries. She was doing fieldwork in the country’s Pilbara region, where she was charged with studying fossilized stromatolites, or columns of sedimentary rock originally created by layers of microbes—some of the planet’s first known life.
The area, a 196,000-square-mile expanse of rust-colored desert populated with rock formations dating back more than 2 billion years, is more or less what you might picture when someone says “the ends of the Earth.” Parts of it remain virtually untouched by humans. Allwood recalled for me recently how one day she and Ian Burch, then her research partner (now her husband), hiked the length of a high, narrow ridge some 10 miles long. “I’m pretty sure we were the only people that had been there for thousands of years,” she told me. “I remember a northern quoll [a ratlike marsupial native to Australia] coming right up to us to take a closer look. It had never seen a human being before, so it wasn’t afraid.”
Even more exciting than the native fauna, however, were the geologic formations Allwood and Burch had come to study. They resembled stacks of upside-down ice-cream cones—a pattern typical of stromatolites, which usually form in shallow water. Their presence suggested that this part of the desert was once a very wet area, perhaps an ocean reef. Before long, Allwood would establish that the rocks constituted the oldest known evidence of life on Earth.
This story is from the June 2018 edition of The Atlantic.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 2018 edition of The Atlantic.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
After the Miracle
Cystic fibrosis once guaranteed an early deathbut a medical breakthrough has given many patients a chance to live decades longer than expected. What do they do now?
WILLIAM WHITWORTH 1937-2024
WILLIAM WHITWORTH, the editor of The Atlantic from 1980 to 1999, had a soft voice and an Arkansas accent that decades of living in New York and New England never much eroded.
Christine Blasey Ford Testifies Again
Her new memoir doubles as a modern-day horror story.
Is Theo Von the Next Joe Rogan?
Or is he something else entirely?
Orwell's Escape
Why the author repaired to the remote Isle of Jura to write his masterpiece, 1984
What's So Bad About Asking Where Humans Came From?
Human origin stories have often been used for nefarious purposes. That doesn't mean they are worthless.
Miranda's Last Gift
When our daughter died suddenly, she left us with grief, memories and Ringo.
BEFORE FACEBOOK, THERE WAS Black Planet
An alternative history of the social web
CLASH OF THE PATRIARCHS
A hard-line Russian bishop backed by the political might of the Kremlin could split the Orthodox Church in two.
THE MAN WHO DIED FOR THE LIBERAL ARTS
Chugging through Pacific waters in February 1942, the USS Crescent City was ferrying construction equipment and Navy personnel to Pearl Harbor, dispatched there to assist in repairing the severely damaged naval base after the Japanese attack.