The Biological Aspects of The Origin of Life
For the humblest organisms, the simplest bacterium, is already a coalition of enormous numbers of molecules...formed independently...to meet by chance and arrange themselves in such a complex system.
-- Francois Jacob
Prokaryotes (commonly known as bacteria), the simplist forms of life, originated a few hundred million years after Earth's crust cooled and solidified. The oldest evidence of life found as of today are fossils resembling spherical and filamentous prokaryotes found in stromatolites that are 3.5 billion years old in southern Africa and Australia. These fossils appear to be photosynthetic, however, suggesting that the earliest life probably had evolved prior to that of 3.5 billion years ago. (see the dating methods)
One of the essential episodes in the formation of life on Earth involved the formation of a selectively permeable membrane that could enclose a solution of different composition from the surrounding solution, therefore providing a stable environment, while still allowing exchanges of nutrients and wastes. This may sound like a very complicated process, however, under the goverance of the laws of chemistry, it really was not too difficult -- all it takes was some of the abiotic elements that were spontaneously available on the early Earth.
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