The Time Capsule in the Salt Flat
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High in the Chilean Andes, at an altitude where the air is thin and the Sun is intense, a salt flat is hiding something remarkable. Locked inside ancient crystals of gypsum are the preserved remains of microscopic life, fossils of organisms that lived thousands of years ago, sitting alongside communities of microbes that are alive right now. Scientists studying this extraordinary place think it could be the closest thing on Earth to where life might once have existed on Mars.
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The Time Capsule in the Salt Flat By Mark Thompson - March 24, 2026 04:39 PM UTC | Planetary Science There is a place in northern Chile, 3,500 metres above sea level in the Andean Altiplano, where almost nothing survives. The Salar de Pajonales is a salt flat of savage extremes temperatures swinging from −23°C to 26°C, solar radiation among the highest measured anywhere on Earth, annual rainfall that barely registers, and winds that rip across the surface at over 100 kilometres per hour. And yet, life is there. That life is not just surviving, but thriving and leaving a record of itself stretching back thousands of years. A new study published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences has found that ancient stromatolites made of gypsum (the same calcium sulphate mineral found in the plaster of my nicely renovated home) at the high-altitude salt flat, contain both fossilised biosignatures from the distant past and living microbial communities in the present day. The two exist within millimetres of each other, separated by layers of crystal. Salar de Pajonales in Chile captured from space (Credit : Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit) Stromatolites are layered rock structures built up over time by communities of microorganisms. They are some of the oldest evidence of life on Earth, with examples dating back 3.5 billion years. The ones found at Salar de Pajonales are far younger, probably between 4,000 and 6,400 years old but what makes them scientifically extraordinary is what they contain. In the deeper layers of the gypsum, researchers found the glassy remains of microscopic algae along with preserved filamentous cell structures and tell tale chemical signatures of ancient photosynthesis. These are fossils, entombed in crystal during a wetter period in the salt flat’s history when a lagoon once covered the site. Just a few millimetres higher up, in the near surface layers of the same rocks, something entirely different is happening. Active communities of some o...
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