Impact Craters as Habitats for Life: Endolithic Colonization of Shocked Gneiss from the Haughton Impact Structure, Devon Island, Canada

• Main Author: Pontefract, Alexandra Janine
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarship@Western 2013
• Subjects: Impact Crater; Endoliths; Origins of Life; Analogue; Mars; Shocked Gneiss; Biogeochemistry; Canada; Devon Island
• Online Access: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1668; https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/context/etd/article/3058/viewcontent/auto_convert.pdf

Meteorite impacts are ubiquitous throughout our solar system and are a fundamental geological process on rocky and icy planetary bodies. Though initially detrimental to biology, an impact event can favourably change the availability and habitability of a substrate for endolithic organisms, which are...