History of life

The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the process of evolution from a common ancestor.
The earliest clear evidence of life comes from biogenic carbon signatures and stromatolite fossils discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from western Greenland. In 2015, possible "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. There is further evidence of possibly the oldest forms of life in the form of fossilized microorganisms in hydrothermal vent precipitates from the Nuvvuagittuq Belt, that may have lived as early as 4.28 billion years ago, not long after the oceans formed 4.4 billion years ago, and after the Earth formed 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago. These earliest fossils, however, may have originated from non-biological processes.
Microbial mats of coexisting bacteria and archaea were the dominant form of life in the early Archean eon, and many of the major steps in early evolution are thought to have taken place in this environment. The evolution of photosynthesis by cyanobacteria, around 3.5 Ga, eventually led to a buildup of its waste product, oxygen, in the oceans. After free oxygen saturated all available reductant substances on the Earth's surface, it built up in the atmosphere, leading to the Great Oxygenation Event around 2.4 Ga. The earliest evidence of eukaryotes dates from 1.85 Ga, likely due to symbiogenesis between anaerobic archaea and aerobic proteobacteria in co-adaptation against the new oxidative stress. While eukaryotes may have been present earlier, their diversification accelerated when aerobic cellular respiration by the endosymbiont mitochondria provided a more abundant source of biological energy. Around 1.6 Ga, some eukaryotes gained the ability to photosynthesize via endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria, and gave rise to various algae that eventually overtook cyanobacteria as the dominant primary producers.
At around 1.7 Ga, multicellular organisms began to appear, with differentiated cells performing specialized functions. While early organisms reproduced asexually, the primary method of reproduction for the vast majority of macroscopic organisms, including almost all eukaryotes, is sexual reproduction, the fusion of male and female reproductive cells to create a zygote. The origin and evolution of sexual reproduction remain a puzzle for biologists, though it is thought to have evolved from a single-celled eukaryotic ancestor.
While microorganisms formed the earliest terrestrial ecosystems at least 2.7 Ga, the evolution of plants from freshwater green algae dates back to about 1 billion years ago. Microorganisms are thought to have paved the way for the inception of land plants in the Ordovician period. Land plants were so successful that they are thought to have contributed to the Late Devonian extinction event as early tree Archaeopteris drew down CO₂ levels, leading to global cooling and lowered sea levels, while their roots increased rock weathering and nutrient run-offs which may have triggered algal bloom anoxic events.
Bilateria, animals having a left and a right side that are mirror images of each other, appeared by 555 Ma. Ediacara biota appeared during the Ediacaran period, while vertebrates, along with most other modern phyla originated about during the Cambrian explosion. During the Permian period, synapsids, including the ancestors of mammals, dominated the land.
The Permian–Triassic extinction event killed most complex species of its time,. During the recovery from this catastrophe, archosaurs became the most abundant land vertebrates; one archosaur group, the dinosaurs, dominated the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event killed off the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals increased rapidly in size and diversity. Such mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.
Only a very small percentage of species have been identified: one estimate claims that Earth may have 1 trillion species, because "identifying every microbial species on Earth presents a huge challenge." Only 1.75–1.8 million species have been named and 1.8 million documented in a central database. The currently living species represent less than one percent of all species that have ever lived on Earth.

Earliest history of Earth

The oldest meteorite fragments found on Earth are about 4.54 billion years old; this, coupled primarily with the dating of ancient lead deposits, has put the estimated age of Earth at around that time. The Moon has the same composition as Earth's crust but does not contain an iron-rich core like the Earth's. Many scientists think that about 60–110 million years after the formation of Solar System, the proto-Earth collided with Theia, a co-orbital, Mars-sized protoplanet originating from the inner Solar System. This collision ejected massive amounts of proto-Earth silicate mantle material into orbit that accreted to form the Moon. Another hypothesis is that the Earth and Moon started to coalesce at the same time but the Earth, having a much stronger gravity than the early Moon, attracted almost all the iron particles in the area.
Until 2001, the oldest rocks found on Earth were about 3.8 billion years old, leading scientists to estimate that the Earth's surface had been molten until then. Accordingly, they named this part of Earth's history the Hadean. However, analysis of zircons formed 4.4 Ga indicates that Earth's crust solidified about 100 million years after the planet's formation and that the planet quickly acquired oceans and an atmosphere, which may have been capable of supporting life.
Evidence from the Moon indicates that, from 4 to 3.8 Ga, it suffered a Late Heavy Bombardment by debris that was left over from the formation of the Solar System, and the Earth should have experienced an even heavier bombardment due to its stronger gravity. While there is no direct evidence of conditions on Earth 4 to 3.8 Ga, there is no reason to think that the Earth was not also affected by this late heavy bombardment. This event may well have stripped away any previous atmosphere and oceans; in this case gases and water from comet impacts may have contributed to their replacement, although outgassing from volcanoes on Earth would have supplied at least half. However, if subsurface microbial life had evolved by this point, it would have survived the bombardment.

Earliest evidence for life on Earth

The earliest identified organisms were minute and relatively featureless, and their fossils looked like small rods that are very difficult to tell apart from structures that arise through abiotic physical processes. The oldest undisputed evidence of life on Earth, interpreted as fossilized bacteria, dates to 3 Ga. Other finds in rocks dated to about 3.5 Ga have been interpreted as bacteria, with geochemical evidence also seeming to show the presence of life 3.8 Ga. However, these analyses were closely scrutinized, and non-biological processes were found which could produce all of the "signatures of life" that had been reported. While this does not prove that the structures found had a non-biological origin, they cannot be taken as clear evidence for the presence of life. Geochemical signatures from rocks deposited 3.4 Ga have been interpreted as evidence for life.
Evidence for fossilized microorganisms considered to be 3.77 billion to 4.28 billion years old was found in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Quebec, Canada, although the evidence is disputed as inconclusive.

Origins of life on Earth

Most biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal ancestor, because it would be virtually impossible that two or more separate lineages could have independently developed the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living organisms.
According to a different scenario a single last universal ancestor, e.g. a "first cell" or a first individual precursor cell has never existed. Instead, the early biochemical evolution of life led to diversification through the development of a multiphenotypic population of pre-cells from which the precursor cells of the three domains of life emerged. Thus, the formation of cells was a successive process. See, below.

Independent emergence on Earth

Life on Earth is based on carbon and water. Carbon provides stable frameworks for complex chemicals and can be easily extracted from the environment, especially from carbon dioxide. There is no other chemical element whose properties are similar enough to carbon's to be called an analogue; silicon, the element directly below carbon on the periodic table, does not form very many complex stable molecules, and because most of its compounds are water-insoluble and because silicon dioxide is a hard and abrasive solid in contrast to carbon dioxide at temperatures associated with living things, it would be more difficult for organisms to extract. The elements boron and phosphorus have more complex chemistries but suffer from other limitations relative to carbon. Water is an excellent solvent and has two other useful properties: the fact that ice floats enables aquatic organisms to survive beneath it in winter; and its molecules have electrically negative and positive ends, which enables it to form a wider range of compounds than other solvents can. Other good solvents, such as ammonia, are liquid only at such low temperatures that chemical reactions may be too slow to sustain life, and lack water's other advantages. Organisms based on alternative biochemistry may, however, be possible on other planets.
Research on how life might have emerged from non-living chemicals focuses on three possible starting points: self-replication, an organism's ability to produce offspring that are very similar to itself; metabolism, its ability to feed and repair itself; and external cell membranes, which allow food to enter and waste products to leave, but exclude unwanted substances. Research on abiogenesis still has a long way to go, since theoretical and empirical approaches are only beginning to make contact with each other.