Cyanosite
--NASA Chroococcidiopsis image
Dividing Chroococcus sp., a type of cyanobacteria,
photosynthetic microbes that also produce oxygen.
While "primitive,"
Chroococcidiopsis
survives in
extremely dry, cold, and salty environments.
Development of Life on Earth and Elsewhere
News briefs at NASA's Astrobiology Institute
Tom Morris' Principles of Planetary Biology at www.planetarybiology.com
Terraforming - recent summary of the physics and biology of making Mars habitable
James Graham and Kandis Elliot, NASA
(See Terraformed Mars by Michael Carroll, NASA/JPL/CalTech)
Mosses and grasses colonizing newly established waterways,
as Mars is
warmed
and
Terraformed
(more information
here).
Information about the diversity of carbon-based organisms on Earth, their history and characteristics, is presented as an "evolutionary tree" at the University of Arizona's Tree of Life Project.
One view of the Phylogeny of Life on Earth (at the University of California at Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology) highlights the role of archeabacteria among prokaryotes -- as a separate Archaea "domain" apart from Eubacteria -- in the development of cellular life with nuclei (eukaryotes). This narrow view is becoming overshadowed by genetic findings that support the more recent hypothesis of complex roots, which emphasizes lateral genetic exchanges rather than vertical mutational progression in the development of nucleated organisms.