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Images show what researchers say could be a "hystrichosphere," a fossilized dinoflagellate cyst.
Journal of Cosmology
A meteorite that lit the sky over Sri Lanka with a yellow and green flame when it fell to earth on Dec. 29, 2012, contains "fossilized biological structures," according to researchers in Britain, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Elaborating on claims they first made in January, the scientists are also seeking to answer critics who are skeptical of their findings.
The team, led by Jamie Wallis of Cardiff University and Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology, says that electron microscope images depict what look to be microscopic diatoms, a form of algae, along with other structures in fragments of the meteorite.
Such a finding would bolster the theory of "panspermia," which Wickramasinghe helped develop, and which posits that asteroids and other bodies spread tiny tidbits of life as they travel through space.
The study released Monday is based on a sample that was gathered by police and examined by the Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in Colombo. Scientists say they later obtained 628 other samples, of which only three were found to be possible meteorite fragments.
The researchers say they analyzed the stones with a scanning electron microscope at Cardiff University, which "resulted in a number of images showing diatom frustules, some of which were clearly embedded in the rock matrix, thereby excluding the possibility of post-arrival contamination." Frustules, we should note, are the silica-based shells of diatoms.
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