The Curse of the Planetary Geologist

We have to make very strategic decisions on where to go and look for our fossils. We're looking for microbial life, but when it comes to microbial life, it's very, very simplistic. The period of history, we're talking three billion years ago, one to two billion years older than when multisalular life existed on Earth. But what happened to that fossil that looked like it had some funny bacteria in it? It did amount to nothing. This is going to be the curse of the planetary geologist, if you like,.It's very hard, especially we're not expecting to find alien faces.