The Interdisciplinary Centre for Ancient Life (ICAL) is a research centre at the University of Manchester dedicated to improving our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth.

ICAL is a unique centre of research excellence in palaeontology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology. Fostering collaborations across the physical, engineering, material, medical and biological sciences, we produce innovative interdisciplinary research and knowledge transfer. A central theme of our research is developing and applying state of the art analytical techniques to the study of ancient life. This research allows us to learn about evolution itself, and also enables us to understand environmental pressures, chemical reactions over deep time, and processes of elemental cycling. Taken together this work has impacts on a range of scientific disciplines.