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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 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes: 3.8 billion-year-old biogenic hematite in a banded iron formation of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada; [30] graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks in western Greenland; [31] and microbial mat fossils in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western Australia.
Earth is the only place in the universe known to harbor life, where it exists in myriad environments. [8] [9] The origin of life on Earth was at least 3.5 billion years ago, possibly as early as 3.8-4.1 billion years ago. [2] [3] [4] Since its emergence, life has persisted in several geological environments.
For early life to have developed, it is generally thought that a land setting is required, so this question is essential to determining when in Earth's history life evolved. [66] Immediately after the Moon-forming impact, Earth likely had little if any continental crust, a turbulent atmosphere, and a hydrosphere subject to intense ultraviolet ...
All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. A new study suggests that this organism likely lived on Earth only 400 million years after its formation.
The first eon in Earth's history, the Hadean, begins with Earth's formation and is followed by the Archean eon at 3.8 Ga. [2]: 145 The oldest rocks found on Earth date to about 4.0 Ga, and the oldest detrital zircon crystals in rocks to about 4.4 Ga, [34] [35] [36] soon after the formation of Earth's crust and Earth itself.
They are extremely important for understanding the evolutionary history of life on Earth, as they provide direct evidence of evolution and detailed information on the ancestry of organisms. Paleontology is the study of past life based on fossil records and their relations to different geologic time periods.
[4] [5] Charles Darwin more famously proposed the theory of universal common descent through an evolutionary process in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859: "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first ...