NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, Geological and Environmental Sciences BS ’10, is at the forefront of a new crop of space explorers destined for the Moon, and maybe one day, Mars.

Scientists are still trying to piece together how Earth transformed from a molten planet to one with living creatures walking around on its silicate mantle and crust. Hints lie in the strange ways materials behave under extreme temperatures and pressures.

A cohort of the Stanford Earth Young Investigators program helped advance our understanding of the relationship between the body size and circulatory systems of marine animals over a vast time frame.

“It’s rare to get this many sporangia with well-preserved spores that you can measure,” said Andrew Leslie, referring to a new species of ancient plant. “We just kind of got lucky in how they were preserved.”