Iron-Rich Meteoritic and Volcanic Particles May Have Promoted Origin of Life Reactions on Early Earth

“The formation of reactive organic molecules to form the building blocks of life on the nascent Earth is one of the prerequisites for abiogenesis,” Professor Trapp and colleagues said. “The emergence of a stable continental crust and liquid water on the Earth at 4.4 billion years ago and the earliest biogenic carbon isotope signatures at 3.8-4.1 billion years ago suggest that life originated only 400-700 million years after the formation of the Earth.” “This relatively short time span indicates that the major part of organic precursors has been already formed on the Hadean Earth as early as 4.4 billion years ago.”