HYPERSPECTRAL VNIR IMAGING OF MICROBIALITES FROM LAKE BAGNO DELL’ACQUA, PANTELLERIA, ITALY.

Microbialites are “organosedimentary deposits that have accreted as a result of a benthic microbial community trapping and binding detrital sediment and/or forming the locus of mineral precipitation” (Burne and Moore, 1987). Stromatolites (a kind of layered microbialites) provide the oldest evidence of microbial life on Earth and for this reason, their study is of paramount importance for the detection and comprehension of potential similar systems existing on Mars (Hickman-Lewis et al. 2023). Of particular interest is the possibility to identify biosignatures in rocks via spectroscopic investigation (e.g. Murphy et al. 2016). The aim of this work is to provide a hyperspectral characterization of several microbialites from the Mars analog site of Lake Bagno dell’Acqua (Bruschini et al. 2024). We will characterize the mineralogy of the samples as well as the distribution of the organic phases in the samples. Here, we report two (C4 and C5) of the collected samples.