EARTH SCIENCE AND EVOLUTION:
Genomics and the Geosciences
Jillian F. Banfield and Charles R. Marshall
The exploding genomic database holds enormous promise for understanding the coevolution of life and the Earth. Genomic data will help us understand how organisms operate and how they evolved, while the geological sciences provide the environmental and temporal context for understanding how and when key thresholds were crossed. A rich collaboration between geosciences and biological sciences should thus lead to fundamental advances in our understanding of the coevolution of the Earth's bio-, hydro-, atmo- and lithospheres.
J. F. Banfield is in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. E-mail: jill{at}geology.wisc.edu. C. R. Marshall is in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. E-mail: marshall{at}eps.harvard.edu
