Achievement

Trainee Jessica Garvin (Earth and Space Sciences) was lead author on an article in the prestigious journal Science (Vol. 323, pp. 1045-8, 2009). Her research involved measuring the isotopic ratios of nitrogen in 2.5-billion-year-old rocks from Australia in order to constrain how nitrogen was processed at that time between the Earth’s rocks, atmosphere, and microbial life (the nitrogen cycle). Garvin and colleagues concluded that microbes were present 2.5 billion years ago that could actively process nitrogen (as they do today), despite the fact that much less oxygen was in the atmosphere than now. This is the earliest evidence that we have for nitrifying and denitrifying microbes.