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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.
[48] [49] [50] Scientific evidence suggests that life began on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago. [ 51 ] [ 52 ] The earliest evidence for life on Earth is graphite found to be biogenic in 3.7-billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland [ 53 ] and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48-billion-year-old sandstone ...
Natural selection is tantamount to common descent in that long-term occurrence and selection pressures can lead to the diversity of life on earth as found today. All adaptations—documented and undocumented changes concerned—are caused by natural selection (and a few other minor processes).
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]
Starting in 1985, researchers proposed that life arose at hydrothermal vents, [224] [225] that spontaneous chemistry in the Earth's crust driven by rock–water interactions at disequilibrium thermodynamically underpinned life's origin [226] [227] and that the founding lineages of the archaea and bacteria were H 2-dependent autotrophs that used ...
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 ...