The charismatic microflora of the desert: the incredible and important natural history of biological soil crusts

For those in the Flagstaff area, I'll be doing a talk about biocrusts for the general public, this Thursday, Oct 17 6:30pm. If you're not familiar with this event, imagine a department seminar with less jargon and more beer. It's fun (kinda wish department seminars were always like this!).

Ancient soils reveal clues to early life on Earth

Ancient soils reveal clues to early life on Earth

New Nature paper out yesterday suggests using geochemistry that oxygen was in the atmosphere and cyanobacteria were in existence 3 billion years ago. No hard fossil evidence of the cyanobacteria exist...the line of thinking rests on the assumption that cyanos were the first oxygenic photosynthesizers. Anyways, cool paper.