This review emerged from several interdisciplinary meetings and
schools gathering a group of astronomers, geologists, biologists,
and chemists, attempting to share their specialized knowledge
around a common question: how did life emerge on Earth? Their
ultimate goal was to provide some kind of answer as a prerequisite
to an even more demanding question: is life universal? The
resulting state-of-the-art articles were written by twenty-five
scientists telling a not-so linear story, but on the contrary,
highlighting problems, gaps, and controversies. Needless to say,
this approach yielded no definitive answers to both questions.
However, by adopting a chronological approach to the question of
the emergence of life on Earth, the only place where we know for
sure that life exists; it was possible to break down this question
into several sub-topics that can be addressed by the different
disciplines.
The main chapters of this review present the formation and
evolution of the solar system (3); the building of a habitable
planet (4); prebiotic chemistry, biochemistry, and the emergence of
life (5); the environmental context of the early Earth (6); and the
ancient fossil record and early evolution (7). The concluding
chapter (9) provides the highlights of the review and presents the
different points of view about the universality of life. Two
pedagogical chapters are included; one on chronometers (2), another
in the form of a "frieze" (8) which summarizes in graphical form
the present state of knowledge about the chronology of the
emergence of life on Earth, before the Cambrian explosion.
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