Allan Hills 84001 - Student Participation

Student Participation

The initial analysis of ALH 84001 was unusual in that an undergraduate student, Anne Taunton of the University of Arkansas, performed much of the SEM work used to correlate the suspected nanobacterial fossils with known terrestrial nanobacterial fossils. NASA's David McKay hired Anne Taunton for a 10-week student internship to perform the SEM analysis, but did not inform her about the nature of what she was investigating. This technique is known as a single blind. Taunton reported the morphology of the biomorphs in ALH 84001 to be very similar to terrestrial samples without knowing that she was describing a Martian meteorite.