The origin of life wasn't fat-free James Sáenz studies how fatty molecules might have helped life get started

Lipids are kind of the ignored middle children of origins of life research. It's time they got a bit of attention, too!

This week's post is a Q&A with geoscientist-turned-??? (interdisciplinary folks know the struggle) @jamessaenz.bsky.social about why there's no cutting the fat from origins. 🧪

Prebiotic organic compounds in samples of asteroid Bennu indicate heterogeneous aqueous alteration | PNAS NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission characterized the asteroid Bennu and delivered pristine samples of its regolith to Earth. Coordinated analyses of this pr...

Check out these exciting new results from asteroid Bennu samples published in PNAS today by Angel Mojarro, a member of the Astrobiology Analytical Lab at NASA Goddard! Prebiotic organic compounds in samples of asteroid Bennu indicate heterogeneous aqueous alteration www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

My co-authored marine GDGT « cookbook » review paper led by Peter Bijl 👨‍🔬 and @kasiasliwinska.bsky.social 👩‍🔬 is now published in @egubg.bsky.social!
doi.org/10.5194/bg-2...
Again, I am so happy to be the @cerege.bsky.social @climatecerege.bsky.social expert on #GDGTs!
@egu.eu
🧪 ⚒️ 🌊
#PaleoSky
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Metazooa Become an evolutionary detective to find the Mystery Animal!

Metazooa is a site with essentially a daily phylogeny game. Guess an animal from its' database, and it will draw a tree showing you the finest scale group that both your guess and the mystery animal are both in, and it'll update it from each additional guess.

metazooa.com

Dig 10 feet underground, anywhere on Earth, and the ground temperature will be a balmy 50 to 60° Fahrenheit (10-15° C). When you tap that ambient heat and hook it up to a heat pump, it becomes the world’s most efficient form of heating and cooling.

A small medal that has an imprint of leaves and a geoporphyrin. The periphery of the medal has an inscription that reads “Alfred Treibs Award” and “The Geochemical Society.”

Celebrate the achievements of your organic geochemistry colleagues by submitting your nominations for the upcoming Treibs and Hayes Awards! The deadline for these Organic Geochemistry Division Awards @geochemsoc.bsky.social
is October 30th, 2025. Learn more:
geochemsoc.org/honors/organ...

🚨Reporters🚨

I'm looking for a reporter who's can zoom into my graduate professional development class and talk about interviewing scientists (e.g., what makes a good interview, how can scientists help reporters, ...).

Why Is This Lake ‘Burping’?

Check out this great write up of our field campaign out on Seneca lake in the @nytimes.com ! With @erinhassett.bsky.social.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/n...

I'm looking for a driven PhD student to join us at @au.dk and to both generate new paleoclimate data in the lab and work on computational problems to understand climate relationships across timescales.

Get in touch if you'd like to hear more, and apply by Nov 1!

phd.nat.au.dk/for-applican...

I'd be delighted to sponsor a NASA Postdoc Fellowship focused on #biosignatures, #astrobiology, or the Origin of Life here at Hopkins! 🚀

✨Paper #2 has just been published @weareagc.bsky.social ✨ And it is about hopanoids!! Thank you @climategordon.bsky.social for trusting a brand new journal with your research. AGC is 💎 open access: free to publish and free to read 🙌 Geochemists, come publish with us! journals.uu.se/AGC/article/...

New published article entitled:

"Hopanoid distributions differ in mineral soils and peat: a re-evaluation of hopane-based pH proxies" from Inglis et al.

You will find the full article here: doi.org/10.33063/agc...

Fundamentally unchanged northwestern African rainfall regimes across the Plio-Pleistocene transition The northern African summer monsoon was unaffected by global cooling at the end of the Pliocene 3 million years ago.

New Science Advances paper on Plio-Pleistocene northern African hydroclimate! Tl;dr the wet summer monsoon = summer insolation & the dry winter monsoon = global ice volume

Paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...), Brown press release here (www.brown.edu/news/2025-06...)

A Nutrient Effect on the TEX86 Paleotemperature Proxy Nutrient stress alters GDGT distributions in marine sediments, resulting in elevated TEX86 ${\text{TEX}}_{86}$ values beyond those related to thermal effects Paleoclimate case studies from the Ar...

Now published in @agu.org Geophysical Research Letters!

What happens to marine archaea when they’re hungry? And what does that mean for the TEX₈₆ paleothermometer?

Full paper here: doi.org/10.1029/2025...

Thanks to my coauthors and mentors for their support — and stay tuned, more is coming!

Biosignatures of diverse eukaryotic life from a Snowball Earth analogue environment in Antarctica Nature Communications - The supraglacial meltwater ponds of the McMurdo Ice Shelf, analogues for proposed Cryogenian period eukaryotic refugia, are shown to host diverse and varied eukaryotic...

I am excited to share our latest work, out now in
@natcomms.nature.com.

We used eukaryotic biomarkers and 18S rRNA genes to examine the ephemeral meltwater ponds of the McMurdo Ice Shelf, revealing pond-to-pond diversity and a biomarker signal for life below the shelf!

More at: rdcu.be/erMkt

Wonderful write-up by the amazing @fatimagulhusain.bsky.social on our recent PNAS paper:

eaps.mit.edu/news-impact/...

All credit to you for leading this cool work! It is always a delight to learn more and more about the GOE.

So, our study pushes that back by over 100 million years and adds to the growing body of evidence that the oxidation of the oceans and the atmosphere were at times decoupled, and likely played out in a tumultuous non-linear fashion after the onset of oxygenic photosynthesis. 6/7

Out online today in @pnas.org our paper:

"Aerobic nitrogen cycle 100 My before permanent atmospheric oxygenation"

With coauthors Gareth Izon, @chrisjunium.bsky.social , Shuhei Ono, and Roger Summons.
1/7

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

P.S. - The deadline to submit an abstract in consideration for an oral presentation during the GRS is April 21st, 2024!

Are you an early career organic geochemist with exciting new science to share? If so, apply to the 2024 GRS & GRC in #OrganicGeochemistry! We hope to offset conf. fees for EC researchers pending available funding. Links: bit.ly/oggrs24 & bit.ly/oggrc24.

... even more examples of #WomenInSTEM:
@carolinelear.bsky.social
@aecpaleo.bsky.social
@astrobonology.bsky.social
@khfreeman.bsky.social
@chloelcjones.bsky.social
@chloerophylla.bsky.social
@carbonatefan.bsky.social
@geobiomaggie.bsky.social
@melissaberke.bsky.social
among many others!

... and these #WomenInSTEM:
@erinmcclimate.bsky.social
@anandpallavijha.bsky.social
@soniachaabane.bsky.social
@clarab.bsky.social
@antacl.bsky.social
@nmpalanox.bsky.social
@climatesmac.bsky.social
@clblanchet.bsky.social
@geochemman.bsky.social
@mevorrath.bsky.social
@ebwilkes.bsky.social
...

Also these #WomenInSTEM doing #paleoclimate and/or #biomarkers:
@ellenhopmans.bsky.social
@fatimagulhusain.bsky.social
@geochemem.bsky.social
@sfeakins.bsky.social
@triptychphrases.bsky.social
@jaquelineqf.bsky.social
@palaeoclimate.bsky.social
@islatope.bsky.social
@antarcticabella.bsky.social
...

Well, it looks like I need to tag a few other 👩‍🔬, including those doing #biomarkers such as #GDGTs, to further support the #WomenInSTEM tag:
@cindydejonge.bsky.social
@francien.bsky.social
@julielattaud.bsky.social
@sarah-coffinet.bsky.social
@docsabine.bsky.social
@villanueva-laura.bsky.social

2 year Postdoc in Biomarker Paleoclimatology - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University

📣 As part of my DFF-funded project, WARMEST, I'm hiring a biomarker-loving postdoc to join my group and examine terrestrial climate + environment of the western Sahel during the Eocene.

Applications are due Feb 15th - contact me with any questions!

RT plz :)

international.au.dk/about/profil...

Thanks for doing this! I'd be grateful to be added as well! Link to Scholar: scholar.google.com/citations?us.... Link to lab site: summons.mit.edu/project/fati....