research interests – astrobiology

My pursuit of merging ichnology and astrobiology is driven by the potential to uncover biosignatures that transcend Earthly boundaries. Organism-substrate interactions, preserved as biogenic structures like trace fossils and ichnofabrics, serve as resilient records of life, capturing the activities of soft-bodied organisms and enduring even when other biosignatures are obliterated.

Review of terrestrial evidence highlights a set of properties that make traces and ichnofabrics important for the search of potential extraterrestrial life:

  1. trace fossils preserve the activity of soft-bodied organisms;
  2. biogenic structures are resilient to processes that obliterate other biosignatures (i.e. mechanical and chemical degradation, diagenesis, tectonism and metamorphism);
  3. traces are very visible biosignatures; traces indicate environment and behaviour;
  4. traces can be universal biosignatures, i.e., biosignatures ideally suited for detecting any type of life.

Selected papers

  • Baucon A., Neto de Carvalho C., Briguglio A., Piazza M., Felletti F. (2021). A predictive model for the ichnological suitability of the Jezero crater, Mars: searching for fossilized traces of life-substrate interactions in the 2020 Rover Mission Landing Site. PeerJ 9 (e11784): 1-59. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11784
  • Baucon, A., Neto de Carvalho, C., Felletti, F., Cabella, R., 2020. Ichnofossils, Cracks or Crystals? A Test for Biogenicity of Stick-Like Structures from Vera Rubin Ridge, Mars. Geosciences 10(2): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10020039
  • Baucon, A., Neto de Carvalho, C., Barbieri, R., Bernardini, F., Cavalazzi, B., Celani, A., Felletti, F., Ferretti, A., Schönlaub, H.P. Todaro, A., Tuniz, C. 2017. Organism-substrate interactions and astrobiology: Potential, models and methods. Earth-Science Reviews 171: 141-180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2017.05.009