Ancient islands belonging to a lost world may be home to all species on Earth.
Published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, the work is led by Dr. Jun Korenaga from Yale University, Dr. Jeffery Bada from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA) and Dr. Carlos Rosas from the Center for Scientific Research and Development. Education University of Ensenada (Mexico) has come up with a scenario that is in stark contrast to the long-standing hypothesis “Earth life originated in the ocean”.
Graphic image depicting ancient Earth, according to new research – (Photo: Michael S. Helfenbein).
The authors suggest that at the dawn of the Earth, when the planet had just stabilized and gave birth to oceans and no continents, the whole land was a few tiny islands emerging in the middle of the sea. That was the period from 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, belonging to the “Thai Co era”.
The results of studying the topography of the Paleozoic Earth based on geological and chemical evidences that have survived to this day show the peculiar formation of these ancient islands. Before that, the young Earth was “heated ” by the decay of radioactive elements in the primordial deep mantle. This heat tends to push upwards, increasing the altitude of the planet’s surface. During the Paleozoic era, this radioactive heating was stronger. Even as the oceanic crust has cooled and shaped, some places have been pushed up too high, forming islands.
On these islands appear warm water ponds, which are favorable environments to receive and nurture “germs of life” from space, such as organic elements and precursors of amino acids, which later will undergo chemical reactions to gradually form more complex molecules such as proteins, DNA, RNA.
Speaking to Live Science, the authors say the evidence for this interesting hypothesis is only geological evidence. They are still working hard to analyze and identify chemical mechanisms that are favorable or unfavorable for life if it arose from land.