查看文章

Glaciovolcanic environments on Mars have been proposed as potential refugia for life, representing some of the longest sustained and recently habitable niches on Mars. However, the production and preservation of biomarkers in analogous settings on Earth remains poorly characterized. Consequently, we investigated the hydrocarbon assemblage of a modern glaciovolcanic area in Iceland with a Mars-like basaltic protolith. We detected two distinct hydrocarbon patterns, both reflective of direct microbial synthesis of hydrocarbons. The first included a predominance of heptadecane and a variety of mid-chain branched heptadecanes diagnostic of cyanobacterial input. The second distribution included an unresolved complex mixture and an unusual distribution of alkane/alkene pairs with a strong even carbon preference (CPI<< 1) in the C14 to C22 range. We interpret the biogenic hydrocarbons as the direct products of