UCLA 'world summit' to explore ancient life on Earth, ...(techniques hopes that will change. The s...)

"I want them to learn the tricks that we know of how to use these instruments," he said. "I want us to learn from one another.

"In China, a scientist saw a three-dimensional picture of a spherical fossil inside a rock and told me, 'It's like seeing the back side of the moon!' he said. "It is astounding the first time you ever see it. Instead of waiting 20 or 30 years for the knowledge to diffuse, I want to cut through that."

Since his first year as a Harvard graduate student in the 1960s, Schopf had the goal of conducting chemical analysis of, and imaging in three-dimensions, individual microscopic fossils inside a rock, but had no technique to do so until recently.

The world summit is sponsored by CSEOL, with support from the NASA Astrobiology Institute and Elsevier.

Summit participants have expertise in a number of fields studying early life, among them microbiology, molecular biology, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry and geology.

Participants will be: Wladyslaw Altermann (Germany), Stanley Awramik (U.S.), David Bottjer, (U.S.), Nicholas Butterfield (England), Junyuan Chen (China), Thomas Fairchild (Brazil), Tamara N. German, Kathleen Grey (Australia), Hans Hofmann (Canada), Christopher House (U.S.), Anatoliy Kudryavtsev (U.S.), Malgorzata Moczydlowska (Sweden), Konstantin Nagovitsin (Russia), Dorothy Oehler (U.S.), Victor Podkovyrov (Russia), Vibhuti Rai (India), J. William Schopf (U.S.), Vladimir N. Sergeev (Russia), Mukund Sharma (India), Purnima Srivastava (India), Kenichiro Sugitani (Japan), Vinod Tewari (India), Yuichiro Ueno (Japan), Nataliya G. Vorob'Eva (Russia), Malcolm Walter (Australia), Frances Westall (France), Shuhai Xiao (U.S.) and Leiming Yin (China).

'/>"/>