Crystals Reveal Early Earth Wasn’t as ‘Hellish’ as Previously Thought
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/17192/20140916/crystals-reveal-early-earth-wasnt-hellish-previously-thought.htm
It is increasingly being held that there was water on the surface of the early Earth, possibly even before the impact that created the moon. During the late heavy bombardment models indicate that despite the wide prevalence of a molten surface on the Earth, there were locations that would have been wet and thus hospitable to early life. It is highly unlikely that we could have survived, but there are plenty of members of the Archaea that would have found the conditions perfect for life (I once worked with an organism that was most happy in dilute battery (sulfuric) acid at 70 C (158 F), for instance). As such, there was probably life from shortly after the Earth cooled from the moon forming impact. Complex life probably took so long to evolve afterwards because the only organisms to survive the late heavy bombardment were probably the ones with the most stable genetic material. For instance I worked with an organism, Nostoc commune I believe, that I was told had DNA so stable that some estimates for the rate of mutation were close to zero, so the organism today is nearly identical with that from a billion years ago. I feel that had the Earth avoided the late heavy bombardment life might not have taken several billion years to evolve into multicellular organisms. Who knows, intelligence might have evolved hundreds of millions of years ago…
