Evolution: review of earliest life evidence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 10, 2024, 16:40 (77 days ago) @ David Turell

No more than 700 million years after Ear formation:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/life-sprang-forth-earth/?utm_campaign=swab&...

"By the time the Earth was less than 1 billion years old, life already had the ability to transcribe and translate information between DNA, RNA, and proteins, and these mechanisms exist in all descended organisms today. Whether life arose multiple times is unknown, but it is generally accepted that all life forms present today have indeed descended from a single population.

"Despite the fact that geological processes can often obscure the fossil record beyond a few hundred million years, we have been able to trace back the origin of life extraordinarily far. Microbial fossils have been found in sandstone dating to 3.5 billion years ago. Graphite, found deposited in metamorphosed sedimentary rock, has been traced back to having biogenic origins, and dates back to 3.8 billion years ago. There are very, very few pieces of the geological record that date back before this time, but we can be fairly certain — based on the most direct evidence available — that life was already thriving on planet Earth some 3.8 billion years ago. That’s impressive for a planet that only formed 4.5 billion years ago!

"At even earlier, more extreme times, the deposits of certain crystals in rocks may have originated (this is more hotly debated) from biological processes, suggesting that Earth was teeming with life as early as 4.3 to 4.4 billion years ago: as soon as 100-200 million years after the Earth and Moon formed. If these zircon crystals, which have inclusions within them that may indicate the metamorphosed remains of organic material, really do come from life processes, the implications are astounding. It would mean that, even through the heavy bombardment period, life on Earth existed: perhaps almost for as long as planet Earth itself.

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"While Venus and Mars may have had similar chances, radical changes to Venus’ atmosphere rendered it a searing hothouse world after as little as merely 200-300 million years, while the death of the Martian magnetic field caused its atmosphere to be stripped away, rendering it solid and frozen after approximately 1-1.5 billion years. While asteroid strikes may have subsequently sent Earth-based life off-world, where it may yet travel all throughout the Solar System and even the Milky Way galaxy, all the evidence we have suggests that planet Earth, right here, is where the biological activity that Earth is home to got its start.

"It took somewhere between 9.4-to-10.0 billion years after the Big Bang for planet Earth to go from a barren, lifeless state to one that was teeming with life."

Comment: keeping to a purposeful philosophy, it all shows a designed planning.