Advent of Complex Life

MIT Team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute  
Mistaken Point Field Excursion 
August 31 - September 3, 2009 

Purpose of visit. 

The MIT Team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute is funded to undertake a project on the development and maintenance of complex life on Earth.  A synopsis of our team’s composition and our research objectives can be found on this website.  In short, we are studying the environmental, genetic, molecular and paleontological records that tell us about the rise of animals and plants.  We would like to hold our annual team’s 3-day symposium in Newfoundland so that we can visit and inspect sites at Mistaken Point, the classic locality of early animal fossils. We will inspect fossil sites on Newfoundland over two days and hold our scientific discussions in hotels at St John’s and Trepassey during three evenings. 

Dates:

August 31-September 3, 2009

Trip Organizer:

Professor Roger Summons FRS - Principle Investigator of the Research Team. 

Fieldtrip Leader:

Dr. Guy Narbonne, Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6.  Dr Marc Laflamme, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208109, New Haven CT 06520-8109 

Guy Narbonne is the author of 20 refereed scientific publications and 5 excursion guidebooks on the fossils and strata of the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve. Marc Laflamme has written five papers on the Mistaken Point biota. 

Participants:

 The group comprises a maximum of 40 people. These are 8 of the co-investigators who are either professors at MIT, Harvard, Dartmouth College and UCLA or senior scientists at Marine Biological Laboratory and the Smithsonian Institution as well as a number of their graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.  Two interested students and one postdoctoral fellow from Memorial University in St John’s will also participate.  All participants are actively engaged in research and teaching of paleobiology and Earth history and our interests are to learn about the Newfoundland fossil localities.  We will take nothing but photographs. 

You can read an article about the excurstion and see some photos.