When the famous 15th-century inventor and scientist Leonardo da Vinci examined petrified shells with borings in them long ago, he had a remarkable insight. The strange fossilized formations, he determined, were likely left behind by ancient organisms.
Half a millennium later, this perspective is potentially useful in our search for alien life, argues a new paper that appears in Earth-Science Reviews, whose findings were recently presented at the European Astrobiology Network Association congress in the Netherlands.
Astronomers have been weighing options for how to identify the existence of life on other planets and moons in our solar system. There are a range of possibilities. Mars could be host to ancient or current life, depending on how much water flows on the surface and how salty it is. There are also many icy moons (some with water geysers) in the outer regions of our solar system — among them Saturn’s Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter’s Europa and Ganymede.
“Leonardo understood the biological nature of borings based on their shape, not their biochemistry,” said Andrea Baucon, the lead researcher. Baucon is an ichnologist, a type of scientist that studies life’s traces through burrows, borings and trails. He previously studied da Vinci’s work and is a researcher at the University of Modena and UNESCO Geopark Naturtejo.
“This observation appears to be trivial,” he went on, “but it potentially allows [us] to detect extra-terrestrial life that differs from known life.”
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