Geobiology is a highly cross-disciplinary field that explores the present and past relationships that life has with non-living matter. “Biosphere meets Geosphere” per- haps most parsimoniously describes the fundamental con- cept of Geobiology. In 1991, Peter Westbroek, a Dutch paleontologist and influential protagonist of Geobiology defined the field in a book entitled “Life as a Geological Force: Dynamics of the Earth”, thus motivating a new way of thinking in the geosciences. His fundamental work on processes of biomineralization in coccolithophorid algae (Westbroek and de Jong, 1983) greatly contributed to the understanding of metabolic processes controlling mineral formation. Westbroek’s thinking was influenced by James Lovelock’s Gaia concept (Lovelock, 1988) which advocated the importance of biological.
