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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.
Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct. [29] Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions have led to large and sudden drops in the variety of species. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, occurred 66 million years ago. [30]
It can also be termed as the zone of life on Earth, a closed system (apart from solar and cosmic radiation and heat from the interior of the Earth), and largely self-regulating. [95] Organisms exist in every part of the biosphere, including soil , hot springs , inside rocks at least 19 km (12 mi) deep underground, the deepest parts of the ocean ...
Life on Our Planet is an American television nature documentary series released on Netflix and produced by Amblin Television and Silverback Films. Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman, the series focuses on the evolutionary history of complex life on Earth. Upon its release, the series received generally mixed ...
Stromatolites provide ancient records of life on Earth by fossil remains which date from 3.5 Ga ago. [172] The oldest undisputed evidence of cyanobacteria is dated to be 2.1 Ga ago, but there is some evidence for them as far back as 2.7 Ga ago. [27] Cyanobacteria might have also emerged 3.5 Ga ago. [173]
Earth is the only known place that has ever been habitable for life. Earth's life developed in Earth's early bodies of water some hundred million years after Earth formed. Earth's life has been shaping and inhabiting many particular ecosystems on Earth and has eventually expanded globally forming an overarching biosphere. [241]
The tree of cousinship (the tree of life, homology and analogy) History written all over us (vestigiality and unintelligent design) Arms races and 'evolutionary theodicy' (coevolution and evolutionary arms races) There is grandeur in this view of life (based on the final passage of On the Origin of Species)