When Did Life Begin On Earth?

Throughout time, it has been a mystery where all life on Earth came from. Though many theories have been thought of, none have strong enough evidence to prove their existence. From meteors from outer space, to clay in the earth, some hypotheses are more widely recognized than others, but none are truly correct as far as our knowledge goes.

Despite a family history of geophysicists and rock enthusiasts, I’ve never found the subject of rocks particularly fascinating. However, an exploration of Earth Science has lead me to the discovery that rocks are actually hidden gems (often literally), and that there’s more to the topic than one would think.

This article was talking about the uniqueness of the 11th Unnamed Cave and it tries to theorized on how the site was used. The article did a good job of explaining the why there are so many mud balls on the ceilings. The authors tries to show both supporting and disproving that the mud balls were there is because they were used to hunt bats. They also use radio carbon dating to try to get close to the dates that the sites were occupied. The articles showed many hypothesize and they were able to make claims to help them prove their points base of off the evidence that was found at the cites. While there were some good parts of the article there were some that I was questioning. Like how did they see some of the images from the petroglyph because I tried looking it from multiple angle and I was not able to see the images that they were talking about. Also, the there were a conflict between the radio carbon dating dates and the artifacts that was found dates. For example, the carbon dating material said that the time that the cave was used is around the Mississippian period. However, some of the artifacts that was found indicate that there were traces of Early to Middle Woodland people are there. Human behaviors varies and it is very hard to pin-point what something

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The earth is known to be 4.534 billion years old. Life however has only been on earth for 3.8 billion years. One major time period from Earths earliest years is the Paleozoic Era. This particular era which lasted from 542 million to 251 million years ago (Lee, Torney & Owen, 2012). It was this time frame that the Earth went through great change, as it was within this era that the breakup of one supercontinent ended, and the formation of another started. It was also in this that plant populations started to grow, whilst the very first vertebrate animals colonized land (Lee, Torney & Owen, 2012). It was in this period that trilobites were in abundance and ruled the oceans (Crônier & François, 2014).

The first chapter of the book discusses the way we can use fossil records to study the biological world. Fossils are one of the major lines of evidence we use to understand ourselves. Surprisingly, we are able to discover them with a high amount of precision and predictability. In particular, field paleontologists have it easier than it has ever been before due to the current information age. The physical hunt for important fossils, however, is much like it has always been. Three factors limiting the number of useful fossil sites include rock age, type (whether or not it can preserve fossils), and number of exposed rocks. So, it takes a bit of luck to reliably find fossils. Thankfully, rock

The sedimentary layers of rock and soil are used by the evolutionists to argue that the layers of rock would have gradually built up over millions of years. Paul D. Ackerman in his book, It’s a Young World After All: Exciting Evidences for Recent Creation, argues that if it took millions of years to build the rock layers found in the Grand Canyon, then scientists should be able to encounter countless numbers of meteors. “With the passage of vast amounts of evolutionary time, these accumulating meteorites would be incorporated into the geologic column, and there should be many of them contained in the rock layers today.” Geologists should be coming across chunks or at least pieces of meteors when digging or observing the layers. However, they do not; which means that there must have been a catastrophic event that laid down the geologic column quickly. This would explain why there are not any indications of meteors in the geological column. Ackerman ends the chapter with a clear cut conclusion: “What do the data show? A clear result in favor of a recent creation. One survey of the literature a few years ago failed to turn up a single case of a meteorite being found in the geologic column. The meteorite clock reads clearly to the effect that the earth is not very old.”

In this video we were able to learn about the such violent beginnings of earth and its first billion years, which is a time of continuous catastrophe. We were also made knowledgable how each catastrophe lead us to where we are today. Despite such violent beginnings, scientists have found new clues that life-giving water and oxygen appeared on our planet much earlier than previously thought. The video summarizes the creation of earth by comparing it to a 24 hour day. This timeline gives us the order of the creation and helps us learn more about earth.

There was another study done by Duval and Venner, that compared the stone tools found in Caleco to those found in Paleo Indian (Patterson, Hoffman, Higginbotham, & Simpson ,1987). They determined that they were not manmade although this method received a lot of criticism as well (Patterson, Hoffman, Higginbotham, & Simpson ,1987). On the other hand, many claim that it could have not been nature that made the tools since it cannot reproduce the same structure again and again (Patterson, Hoffman, Higginbotham, & Simpson ,1987).

Stalactites hang from the ceiling and look like icicles. They are formed when water flowing into the cave form calcite and leaks through the ceiling cracks. Stalagmites grow up from the floor as the water continues to drip from the Stalactites. Stalactites and stalagmites are often found growing together and will sometimes form a column (Kids Discover 2013). Helicities form on the cave’s ceiling and walls and can take on many forms and looks, including curly spaghetti looks or thick antler looks. Helicities are an irregular stalactite that have branches at different angles and thicknesses (Bunnell, 2005). Gypsum is a calcium sulfate mineral found in dry sections of the cave. This mineral can be colorless, white or yellow and resembles a flower growing out of the walls, ceilings or floor

Donald K. Grayson, an Archaeologist was one person of the bunch that doubted the discovery, based on the article the reason why he thought so is because “there might be other reasons for why there is marking on the bones”. After that the article goes on to talk about how the mastodon bones where discovered. In the text it stated that “stones were seen around the broken mastodon bones and that researcher tried to replicate the marking on the bones using the stones”. It turns out that the process result in a similar scattered pattern seen when they first dug up the Mastodon bones. Based on this information Rolfe D. Mandel a geoarchaeologist stated “this only proves that people had some role in how these markings on the bones came

Most of us are familiar with the panspermia hypothesis – that life can be “seeded” from asteroid, comet, and planetoid contents – but to date, no direct evidence has been discovered. So, why should we consider meteorites to be possible parents? The truth is out there somewhere and these space rocks contain the essentials, as far down as to amino acids. Until now, what has been recovered has been regarded as structured. However, the matter of Tagish Lake arose.

Life has continually perplexed and fascinated individuals since the dawn of mankind. The subject’s complexity is so great even over the course of human existence only a minute fraction of its mysteries have been unraveled. A phenomenon which has always intrigued scientists is the origin of life on Earth, and in recent years significant advancements have been made in the understanding of this enigma. This essay will briefly outline two theories regarding life’s origin on Earth to further comprehend why an explanation for this phenomenon has been so difficult to reach.

When life arose on Earth about 4 billion years ago, the first types of cells to evolve were prokaryotic cells. For approximately 2 billion years, prokaryotic-type cells were the only form of life on Earth. The oldest known sedimentary rocks found in Greenland are about 3.8 billion years old. The oldest known fossils are prokaryotic cells, 3.5 billion years in age, found in Western Australia and South Africa. The nature of these fossils, and the chemical composition of the rocks in which they are found, indicates that these first cells made use of simple chemical reactions to produce energy for their metabolism and growth. Eukaryotic cells evolved into being between 1.5 and 2 billion years ago. Eukaryotic cells appear to have arisen from prokaryotic cells, specifically out of the archaea. Indeed, there are many similarities in molecular biology of contemporary archaea and eukaryotes. However, the origin of the eukaryotic organelles, specifically chloroplasts and mitochondria, is explained by evolutionary associations between primitive nucleated cells and certain respiratory and photosynthetic bacteria, which led to the development of these organelles and the associated explosion of eukaryotic diversity. Today Prokaryotes