On the morning of October 8th, Prof. Yuji Sano from Kochi University visited the School of Earth System Science (SESS) and gave an academic presentation titled "Early trace of life from 3.95 Ga sedimentary rocks in Labrador, Canada " in which he explored the oldest traces of life on Earth with the faculty and students of SESS.
The presentation focused on the question of when life originated on Earth in its early stages. After briefly reviewing the history of Earth’s life evolution and fossil evidence for the earliest life, he introduced the concept of "chemical fossils" that is based on stable carbon isotope systematics and could be preserved in old sedimentary rocks.He elaborated on the research results of a team led by him on the 3.95 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks from Labrador, Canada. Their work was published in Nature (Tashiro et al., 2017, doi:10.1038/nature24019) and provided crucial geochemical evidence for determining the timing of the origin of life on Earth, which also holds significant importance for exploring the origin of life on other terrestrial planets.
Yuji Sano is currently a professor at Kochi University. He has been appointed as the director of Marine Core Research Institute, Kochi University after his retirement as an Emeritus Professor from Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo. He is also an Honorary Professor at Tianjin University. Prof. Yuji Sano is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) since 2012 and a Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry since 2019.
