Nora Noffke

Nora Noffke is an American geobiologist who is an associate professor for Oceans and Earth Sciences at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk Virginia. Her expertise is in Biofilm Sedimentology where she researches the biofilm structures of modern marine environments and fossil records as well as combining interdisciplinary studies of sedimentology with microbiology, geochemistry, and mineralogy.
Education.
Noffke's education consists of a bachelor of Science in Geology-Paleontology from the University of Tübingen, Germany in 1990. in 1992 she got her Master of Science in geology-paleontology from the University of Tübingen, in that time her thesis advisor was Dolf Seilacher, together they carried out research on trace fossils. Followed by her passion, Nora continued her education to complete her Ph.D. in Geomicrobiology at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. At the University of Oldenburg she worked alongside Dr. Gisela Gerdes, a prominent microbiologist who researched the field of modern microbial mats in siliciclastic deposits.
Career.
Noffke is known for her work on microbial mats and sedimentary structures in sandy deposits, and has initiated the actuopaleontological approach to the examination of the Earth's past. She has been involved with projects including the Mars Rover Mission in 2003 with NASA, arranging the First SEPM Field Conference on Siliciclastic Microbial Mats, established the Gordon Research Conference 'Geobiology,' and presented at the Geological Society of America Meetings.
Noffke serves as Chair of the Subcommission on Precambrian Stratigraphy of the International Stratigraphic Commission, which are responsible for trying to piece together the timelines of earth, as well as make the information more accessible to the public. She is also an editor for the Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology which records all new fossil types of invertebrates and archives them for future researchers.
In honor of Noffke's efforts within the science community, a genus that was discovered at Ediacaran Grant Bluff Formation, Australia was named Noffkarkys storaaslii in 2020.
Research.
Ancient earth.
The experimental use of Microbially-Induced-Sedimentary-Structures (MISS) has given researchers an advantage in terms of dating microbes within sedimentary layers. Noffke discovered 16 different types of MISS that are the result of different factors of growth, trapping, biostabilization, baffling, and binding. She used this process during an excavation at the Dresser Formation, Pilbara, Western Australia and thus may have found what could be the oldest evidence of life, estimated to be about 3.48 billions year ago during the early Archean period. These mats that cover tidal flats in unusual textures and patch-like formations that are within the sand holds tiny microbes that are shown to have evidence that they existed both historically and presently.
Noffke mapped and analyzed MISS at Dinosaur Ridge which further developed knowledge of paleoenvironmental conditions that formed the Upper Crustaceous "J" Sandstone, and broadens insight of how similar tracksites developed.
Noffke in collaboration with Gisela Gerdes, Thomas Klenke, and Wolfgang E. Krumben suggested a new fifth group to Pettijohn and Potter's classification of primary sedimentary structures, called bedding modified by microbial mats and biofilms. They divided it into 2 classes one for those on bedding planes and the second for those within beds. The first class was characterized by leveled wrinkled structures and depositional surfaces, microbial mat chips, remnants from erosion and pockets, palimpsest/multidirectional ripples, shrinkage cracks and mat curls. The second class, within beds, was characterized by gas domes, sponge pore fabrics and fenestrae structures, oriented grains, benthic ooids, sinoidal laminae, mat-layer-bound grain size and biolaminites.
Astrobiology.
In her book "Geology: Microbial Mats in Sandy Deposits from the Archean to Today," Noffke emphasizes that Miss has potential in offering new evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. With their discovery of the ancient microbes at Dresser Formation, Noffke hypothesized while investigating images that were taken by the NASA Curiosity rover on Mars that what may have lived on earth almost 3.48 billions years ago could be the same microbial mats that currently living on Mars. The photos were taken at the Gillespie Lake outcrop in Yellowknife Bay, which is a dry lake bed that flooded intermittently billions of years ago. Noffke published in the journal "Astrobiology" a comparison of both sedimentary structures of Martian and of those on earth.