| Popis: |
Tirez was a small and seasonal endorheic athalassohaline lagoon that was located in central Spain. In recent years, the lagoon has totally dried out, offering for the first time the opportunity to analyze its evolution to hyperaridity as an analog to similar processes in Meridiani Planum, Mars. In Meridiani, an early period of water ponding within enclosed basins evolved to a complete desiccation of the lagoons, leading to deposition of evaporitic sequences during the Noachian and well into the Hesperian. Here we describe (i) the microbial ecology of Tirez when the lagoon was still active 20 years ago, with prokaryotes adapted to extreme saline conditions; (ii) the composition of the microbial community in the dried lake sediments today, in many case groups that thrive in sediments of extreme environments; and (iii) the molecular and isotopic analysis of the lipid biomarkers that can be recovered from the sediments today. We discuss the implications of these results to better understanding the ecology of possible Martian microbial communities during the wet to dry transition at the end of the Hesperian, and how they may inform about research strategies to search for possible biomarkers in Mars after all the water was lost. |
