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Science 25 June 1999:
Vol. 284. no. 5423, pp. 2111 - 2113
DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5423.2111
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News

EVOLUTION:
Early Life Thrived Despite Earthly Travails

Richard A. Kerr

Because fossils from Earth's early years are rare and frustratingly cryptic, many researchers studying the origins of life are turning to geology, hoping to learn the state of the planet's surface and atmosphere when it first hosted living things. This approach joins clever techniques to wrest more direct information about life from long-dead rocks (see sidebar) and laboratory efforts to explore the likely chemistry of early life or infer its genetic nature from the genes of living creatures. The geologic approach is revealing a series of hair-raising escapes, in which living organisms survived rocks raining down from the sky, precarious climate control, and either scarcity or abundance of oxygen.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
What it takes to fly: the structural and functional respiratory refinements in birds and bats.
J. Maina (2000)
J. Exp. Biol. 203, 3045-3064
   Abstract »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)