Imperial Fringe showcases how species shape our lives

Feathers, claws and slimy scales were all on show at Thursday night's Fringe event exploring species past and present, on earth and beyond. The species on show came in all shapes and sizes, from the gigantic to the microscopic. This final Imperial Fringe event before the 2014 Imperial Festival gave people the opportunity to ask scientists how species affect our everyday life. Does only earth have life? In our gigantic universe, with an estimated septillion stars (that is a mind boggling 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars), it is hard to imagine that there is no other life out there in the blackness of space. Dr Matthew Genge from the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering brought along four and half billion year old meteorites to demonstrate how life may have been brought to earth. He said: "About four and half billion years ago our planet was bombarded by meteorites, which contain a lot of carbon and the biological material needed for life to begin. The early history of Mars was very similar to Earth - it was also bombarded by the same molecules - so it is very possible that there is life on Mars.