A New History of Life

by Peter Ward

  9. M. Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes: New Translations and Interpretations of the Primary Texts (University of Chicago Press, 1997).

  10. There are many works on the number of species through time, and we will look at this in detail in the pages to come. One of the most recent is by John Alroy and a host of other authors, “Phanerozoic Trends in Global Diversity of Marine Invertebrates,” Science 321 (2008): 97.

  11. N. Lane, The Vital Question: Why Is Life the Way It Is? (London: Profile Books, 2015); Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution (London: Profile Books, 2009); Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  CHAPTER I: TELLING TIME

  1. A good guide to stratigraphic usage comes from the International Subcommission on Stratigraphy. This is a very formal group that angsts over every term and name. They are online: one useful chapter is stratigraphy.org/upload/bak/defs.htm.

  2. Variety of age dating, brief synopsis of: Uranium, potassium argon, uranium lead, strontium isotope dating, and magnetostratigraphy are all used. To come to grips with all of this we recommend the works of Martin Rudwick, all available in both libraries and online bookstores. These include, most recently, M. Rudwick, Earth’s Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

  3. The first system was indeed rock type: each kind of lithology, such as volcanic rock, metamorphic rock, and particularly the kinds of sedimentary rock (such as sandstone, chalk, shale) were thought to be distinctive and characteristic of a specific time. Hence the Cretaceous period was first named for the kind of rock found commonly in Europe, white chalk. Later it was found that the same rock types could be made at any time. See M. Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Paleontology (London: Science History Publications, 1972).

  4. The use of fossils for telling time, and William “Strata” Smith’s role in the revolution of understanding and defining the geological time scale can be found in many books. A very useful one is from our late friend Bill Berry of UC Berkeley, a paleontologist and scientist sorely missed: W. B. N. Berry, Growth of a Prehistoric Time Scale (Boston: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1987): 202.

  5. J. Burchfield, “The Age of the Earth and the Invention of Geological Time,” D. J. Blundell and A. C.Scott, eds., Lyell: the Past is the Key to the Present (London,Geological Society of London, 1998), 137–43.

  6. By the late 1800s a great deal of fame came to be associated with being the author of a geological period. One such grab for glory was by Lapworth. See the ever-readable M. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge Among Gentlemanly Specialists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

  7. K. A. Plumb, “New Precambrian Time Scale,” Episode 14, no. 2 (1991): 134–40.

  8. A. H. Knoll, et al., “A New Period for the Geologic Time Scale,” Science 305, no. 5684 (2004): 621–22.

  CHAPTER II: BECOMING AN EARTHLIKE PLANET: 4.6–4.5 GA

  1. Earthlike planets and estimations of number of ELPs: The many definitions of what is “Earthlike” vary tremendously. The number of such planets, or at least our estimates, vary as well. A good scientific reference is here: E. A. Petigura, A. W. Howard, G. W. Marcy, “Prevalence of Earth-Size Planets Orbiting Sun-Like Stars,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, no. 48 (2013). doi:10.1073-pnas.1319909110, and the NASA publicity view, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler20130103.html.

  2. NASA’s sense of it can also be found at http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/02oct_goldilocks/ Also interesting and up to date is S. Dick, “Extraterrestrials and Objective Knowledge,” in A. Tough, When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact (Foundation for the Future, 2000): 47–48.

  3. While not the scientific papers that began the revolution, this later article by Geoff Marcy is a good entry into the subject: G. Marcy et al. “Observed Properties of Exoplanets: Masses, Orbits and Metallicities,” Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement no. 158 (2005): 24–42.

  4. D. McKay et al., “Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activity in Martian Meteorite AL84001,” Science 273, no. 5277 (1996): 924–30.

  5. P. Ward, Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for and Synthesis of Alien Life (New York: Viking, 2005); P. Ward and S. Benner, “Alternative Chemistry of Life,” in W. Sullivan and J. Baross, eds. Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 537–44.

  6. W. K. Hartmann and D. R. Davis, “Satellite-Sized Planetesimals and Lunar Origin,” Icarus 24, no. 4 (1975): 504–14; R. Canup and E. Asphaug, “Origin of the Moon in a Giant Impact Near the End of the Earth’s Formation,” Nature 412, no. 6848 (2001): 708–12; A. N. Halliday, “Terrestrial Accretion Rates and the Origin of the Moon,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 176, no. 1 (2000): 17–30; D. Stöffler and G. Ryder, “Stratigraphy and Isotope Ages of Lunar Geological Units: Chronological Standards for the Inner Solar System,” Space Science Reviews 96 (2001): 9–54.

  7. A. T. Basilevsky and J. W. Head, “The Surface of Venus,” Reports on Progress in Physics 66, no. 10 (2003): 1699–1734; J. F. Kasting, “Runaway and Moist Greenhouse Atmospheres and the Evolution of Earth and Venus,” Icarus 74, no. 3 (1988): 472–94.

  8. D. H. Grinspoon and M. A. Bullock, “Searching for Evidence of Past Oceans on Venus,” Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 39 (2007): 540.

  9. A good general reference for the age of the Earth is G. B. Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 1994), while his more technical take is “The Age of the Earth in the Twentieth Century: A Problem (Mostly) Solved,” Special Publications, Geological Society of London 190 (2001): 205–21.

  10. This concern that the heavy bombardment would have adversely affected life and its early history was first illuminated by Kevin Maher and David Stevenson of Caltech in 1988, in a short letter to Nature. “Impact Frustration of the Origin of Life,” Nature 331, no. 6157 (1988): 612–14. Many have followed on, including Kevin Zahnle and Norm Sleep. An early reference is K. Zahnle et al., “Cratering Rates in the Outer Solar System,” Icarus 163 (2003): 263–89; F. Tera et al., “Isotopic Evidence for a Terminal Lunar Cataclysm,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 22, no. 1 (1974): 1–21. The origin of the bombardment has recently been reexamined, concerning possible migration of outer planets several hundred million years after the major phase of accretion: W. F. Bottke et al., “An Archaean Heavy Bombardment from a Destabilized Extension of the Asteroid Belt,” Nature 485 (2012): 78–81; G. Ryder et al., “Heavy Bombardment on the Earth at ~3.85 Ga: The Search for Petrographic and Geochemical Evidence,” in Origin of the Earth and Moon, R. M. Canup and K. Righter, eds. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000): 475–92.

  11. A great deal has been written about the origin of the Earth’s atmosphere. A good website concentrating on the role of life in this process is www.amnh.org/learn/pd/earth/pdf/evolution_earth_atmosphere.pdf.

  A reference article can be found from K. Zahnle et al., “Earth’s Earliest Atmospheres,” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2, no. 10 (2010).

  12. The evaporation of the early oceans by impact from “Texas-sized asteroids” always got an uneasy chuckle from undergraduate classes when we brought it up during the George W. Bush presidency. As time separates us from those days, the concept now seems a bit different and purely scientific. A good PDF (but with a strange name) gets into the physics of it all in an understandable way: www.breadandbutterscience.com/CATIS.pdf.

  13. Figuring out how much carbon dioxide was in the early Earth atmosphere is difficult. There are no real direct methods. References include: J. Walker, “Carbon Dioxide on the Early Earth,” Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 16, no. 2 (1985):
117-27. For Phanerozoic era (the time of “visible life”), here are two seminal papers: D. H. Rothman, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels for the Last 500 Million Years,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 7 (2001): 4167–71, and D. Royer et al., “CO2 as a Primary Driver of Phanerozoic Climate,” GSA Today 14, no. 3 (2004): 4–15. For much of the rest of this chapter there is no better primer than the wonderful college text by L. Kump et al., The Earth System, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009). This amazing if pricey textbook is a great doorway into what is called Earth system science. The discussions of the carbon cycle as well as other elemental systems leading to habitability come from this text.

  14. Ward has dealt with this topic in book-length treatment (P. Ward, Out of Thin Air. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2006). The various Robert Berner references include R. A. Berner, “Models for Carbon and Sulfur Cycles and Atmospheric Oxygen: Application to Paleozoic Geologic History,” American Journal of Science 287, no. 3 (1987): 177–90. Also highly relevant are: L. R. Kump, “Terrestrial Feedback in Atmospheric Oxygen Regulation by Fire and Phosphorus,” Nature 335 (1988): 152–54; L. R. Kump, “Alternative Modeling Approaches to the Geochemical Cycles of Carbon, Sulfur, and Strontium Isotopes,” American Journal of Science 289 (1989): 390–410; L. R. Kump, “Chemical Stability of the Atmosphere and Ocean,” Global and Planetary Change 75, no. 1–2 (1989): 123–36; L. R. Kump and R. M. Garrels, “Modeling Atmospheric O2 in the Global Sedimentary Redox Cycle,” American Journal of Science 286 (1986): 336–60.

  15. W. F. Ruddiman and J. E. Kutzbach, “Plateau Uplift and Climate Change,” Scientific American 264, no. 3 (1991): 66–74, and M. Kuhle, “The Pleistocene Glaciation of Tibet and the Onset of Ice Ages—An Autocycle Hypothesis,” GeoJournal 17 (4) (1998): 581–95; M. Kuhle, “Tibet and High Asia: Results of the Sino-German Joint Expeditions (I),” GeoJournal 17, no. 4 (1988).

  16. The life and work of Robert Berner: R. A. Berner, “A New Look at the Long-Term Carbon Cycle,” GSA Today 9, no. 11 (1999): 1–6; R. A. Berner, “Modeling Atmospheric Oxygen over Phanerozoic Time,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 65 (2001): 685–94; R. A. Berner, The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 150.; R. A. Berner, “The Carbon and Sulfur Cycles and Atmospheric Oxygen from Middle Permian to Middle Triassic,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 69, no. 13 (2005): 3211–17; R. A. Berner, “GEOCARBSULF: A Combined Model for Phanerozoic Atmospheric Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 70 (2006): 5653– 5664; R. A. Berner and Z. Kothavala, “GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide over Phanerozoic Time,” American Journal of Science 301, no. 2 (2001): 182–204.

  CHAPTER III: LIFE, DEATH, AND THE NEWLY DISCOVERED PLACE IN BETWEEN

  1. Perhaps the best way to understand the Mark Roth work is his TED talk: www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation.

  2. T. Junod, “The Mad Scientist Bringing Back the Dead.… Really,” Esquire.com, December 2, 2008.

  3. E. Blackstone et al., “H2S Induces a Suspended Animation–Like State in Mice,” Science 308, no. 5721 (2005): 518.

  4. D. Smith et al., “Intercontinental Dispersal of Bacteria and Archaea by Transpacific Winds,” Applied and Environmental Microbiology 79, no. 4 (2013): 1134–39.

  5. K. Maher and D. Stevenson, “Impact Frustration of the Origin of Life,” Nature 331 (1988): 612–14.

  6. E. Schrödinger, What Is Life? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944), 90.

  7. P. Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. (New York: Penguin Press, 1998), 260.

  8. P. Ward, Life as We Do Not Know It (New York: Viking Books, 2005).

  9. W. Bains, “The Parts List of Life,” Nature Biotechnology 19 (2001): 401–2; W. Bains, “Many Chemistries Could Be Used to Build Living Systems,” Astrobiology, 4, no. 2 (2004): 137–67; and N. R. Pace, “The Universal Nature of Biochemistry,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unites States of America 98, no. 3 (2001): 805–808; S. A. Benner et al., “Setting the Stage: The History, Chemistry, and Geobiology Behind RNA,” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 4, no. 1 (2012): 7–19; M. P. Robertson and G. F. Joyce, “The Origins of the RNA World,” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 4, no. 5 (2012); C. Anastasi et al., “RNA: Prebiotic Product, or Biotic Invention?” Chemistry and Biodiversity 4, no. 4 (2007): 721–39; T. S. Young and P. G. Schultz, “Beyond the Canonical 20 Amino Acids: Expanding the Genetic Lexicon,” The Journal of Biological Chemistry 285, no. 15 (2010): 11039–44.

  10. F. Dyson, Origins of Life, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 100

  11. Nick Lane is an iconoclast with rather unerring judgment. For a good take on energy complexity, see N. Lane, “Bioenergetic Constraints on the Evolution of Complex Life,” in P. J. Keeling and E. V. Koonin, eds., The Origin and Evolution of Eukaryotes. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology (2013).

  12. J. Banavar and A. Maritan. “Life on Earth: The Role of Proteins,” J. Barrow and S. Conway Morris, Fitness of the Cosmos for Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 225–55.

  13. E. Schneider and D. Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

  CHAPTER IV: FORMING LIFE: 4.2(?)–3.5 GA

  1. Dr. D. R. Williams, Viking Mission to Mars, NASA, December 18, 2006.

  2. www.space.com/18234-viking-1.html.

  3. ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19740026174.pdf. Also see R. Navarro-Gonzáles et al., “Reanalysis of the Viking Results Suggests Perchlorate and Organics at Midlatitudes on Mars,” Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (2010).

  4. P. Rincon, “Oldest Evidence of Photosynthesis,” BBC.com, December 17, 2003 and S. J. Mojzsis et al., “Evidence for Life on Earth Before 3,800 Million Years Ago,” Nature 384 (1996): 55–59; M. Schidlowski, “A 3,800-Million-Year-Old Record of Life from Carbon in Sedimentary Rocks,” Nature 333 (1988): 313–18; M. Schidlowski et al., “Carbon Isotope Geochemistry of the 3.7 × 109 Yr Old Isua Sediments, West Greenland: Implications for the Archaean Carbon and Oxygen Cycles,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 43 (1979): 189–99.

  5. K. Maher and D. Stevenson. “Impact Frustration of the Origin of Life,” Nature 331 (1988): 612–14.

  6. R. Dalton. “Fresh Study Questions Oldest Traces of Life in Akilia Rock,” Nature 429 (2004): 688. This work is continuing; see Papineau et al., “Ancient Graphite in the Eoarchean Quartz-Pyroxene Rocks from Akilia in Southern West Greenland I: Petrographic and Spectroscopic Characterization,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 74, no. 20 (2010): 5862–83.

  7. J. W. Schopf, “Microfossils of the Early Archean Apex Chert: New Evidence of the Antiquity of Life,” Science 260, no. 5108 (1993): 640–46.

  8. M. D. Brasier et al., “Questioning the Evidence for Earth’s Oldest Fossils,” Nature 416 (2002): 76–81.

  9. D. Wacey et al., “Microfossils of Sulphur-Metabolizing Cells in 3.4-Billion-Year-Old Rocks of Western Australia,” Nature Geoscience 4 (2011): 698–702.

  10. M. D. Brasier, Secret Chambers: The Inside Story of Cells and Complex Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 298.

  11. “Ancient Earth May Have Smelled Like Rotten Eggs,” Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, May 3, 2013.

  12. www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/#.U4Izyxa9yxo.

  13. www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/08/22/3299027.htm.

  14. J. Haldane, What Is Life? (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1947), 53.

  15. L. Orgel, The Origins of Life: Molecules and Natural Selection (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 1973).

  16. J. A. Baross and J. W. Deming, “Growth at High Temperatures: Isolation and Taxonomy, Physiology, and Ecology,” in The Microbiology of Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents, D. M. Karl, ed. (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1995), 169–217, and E. Stueken et al., “Did Life Originate in a Global Chemical Reactor?” Geobiology 11, no.2 (2013); K. O. Stetter, “Extremophiles
and Their Adaptation to Hot Environments,” FEBS Letters 452, nos. 1–2 (1999): 22–25. K. O. Stetter, “Hyperthermophilic Microorganisms,” in Astrobiology: The Quest for the Conditions of Life, G. Horneck and C. Baumstark-Khan, eds. (Berlin: Springer, 2002), 169–84.

  17. Y. Shen and R. Buick, “The Antiquity of Microbial Sulfate Reduction,” Earth Science Reviews 64 (2004): 243–272.

  18. S. A. Benner, “Understanding Nucleic Acids Using Synthetic Chemistry,” Accounts of Chemical Research 37, no. 10 (2004): 784–97; S. A. Benner, “Phosphates, DNA, and the Search for Nonterrean life: A Second Generation Model for Genetic Molecules,” Bioorganic Chemistry 30, no. 1 (2002): 62–80.

  19. G. Wächtershäuser, “Origin of Life: Life as We Don’t Know It,” Science, 289, no. 5483 (2000): 1307–08; G. Wächtershäuser, “Evolution of the First Metabolic Cycles,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, no. 1 (1990): 200–204; G. Wächtershäuser, “On the Chemistry and Evolution of the Pioneer Organism,” Chemistry & Biodiversity 4, no. 4 (2007): 584–602.

  20. N. Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).

  21. W. Martin and M. J. Russell, “On the Origin of Biochemistry at an Alkaline Hydrothermal Vent,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 362, no. 1486 (2007): 1887–925.

  22. C. R. Woese, “Bacterial Evolution,” Microbiological Reviews 51, no. 2 (1987): 221–71; C. R. Woese, “Interpreting the Universal Phylogenetic Tree,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (2000): 8392–96.