However, «the CT scan didn't show the outline of the nervous systems unambiguously enough,» Strausfeld said, «while a scanning laser technique mapping the distribution of chemical elements
showed iron deposits outlining the nervous system almost as convincingly but with minor differences.»
Those genes might
show that peak ring microbes — descendants of those that lived after the impact — derive their energy not from carbon and oxygen, like most microbes, but from
iron or sulfur
deposited by hot fluids percolating through the fractured rock.