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How do we know?
Spontaneous Generation
of life
2) Didnt prove how life got started on Earth, the experimental results
support the hypothesis by showing that life-forming chemicals could
have been produced naturally under the conditions of the primitive
Earth
3) In combination with evidence from: Space Exploration, Vulcanology
& Earth Chemistry Ancient Rocks & Fossils Study of Primitive
Life Alive Today and other areas of scientific study, the Urey-Miller
experiment is just one part of a package of evidence that seems
consistent with the idea that life formed naturally on the primitive
Earth 4 billion years ago, and has evolved into what we see today
The hypothesis that Urey & Miller tested is not the only idea for the
origins of life
It has been suggested that the first living things on Earth (or at least
the chemicals they formed from) could have come from outer space
so far the weight of evidence supports the hypothesis that Earth life
arose on Earth, and not somewhere else
Radiometric Dating
It is the method that allows us to measure the age of rocks & fossils
Atoms of each chemical element are not all exactly the same
They have the same number of protons & electrons (thats what
makes them that element), but the number of neutrons in the atom
can vary (making them an isotope)
Some isotopes are radio-active and give off nuclear radiations...
hence radioisotopes.
Radio-isotopes decay at a predictable rate
Electron microscope
Allows scientists to study very ancient fossil cells in rocks and to
make comparisons with some types of primitive cells
Gives us further clues about how ancient life-forms lived and
evolved
Biochemical Analysis & DNA Technology
We cant be sure when this happened, but by about 3.8 billion years
ago we find chemical evidence of living cells in some rocks, and by
For 1,000 million years the most advanced organisms on Earth were
bacteria-like cells which lived without O2, and scavenged the organic
soup of organic molecules in oceans
About 2.8 billion years ago, a new type of bacteria appears in the
fossil record
Up until
We find huge deposits of evidence for what happened next... the world
went rusty!
The explanation is that, in the anoxic early conditions a lot of iron was
2+
dissolved in the oceans in the soluble form of Fe
ions.
As the cyanobacteria began releasing vast quantities of O oxygen, it
2
reacted with the iron forming the insoluble Fe O iron oxide (which is
2 3
RUST).
Eventually, after about 200 million years, all the iron was precipitated,
and now the oxygen began building up in the atmosphere... the air
became OXIC.
This had four important consequences: 1. The natural production of organic chemicals by the Urey-Miller process
stopped forever. Oxygen is chemically active enough to destroy organic
molecules as fast as they could form. Life could never again start up the way
it once did.
2. The old-type anaerobic bacteria found oxygen poisonous, so many became
extinct. A few survived in environments where there is no oxygen, and there
they live to this day... you will study them soon.
3. Atmospheric oxygen allowed development of an ozone layer. This absorbs
UV rays and was vital for the later development of life on land.
4. The oxic environment encouraged a new, more efficient way to use food
energy... cellular respiration. By 2 billion years ago the familiar modern
cycle was operating:
Prior to about 1.5 billion years ago, all life on Earth was procaryotic
meaning that the cells lack a true nucleus, mitochondria, chloroplasts,
etc. The living procaryotes of today are the bacteria and cyanobacteria
thats how life on Earth might have remained forever, except some
cells ate some smaller cells, but failed to digest them
The small cells lived on inside their host in a relationship that soon
became mutualism, and after millions of years, the ingested cells
evolved to became organelles of the larger cell
a single cell cannot grow too large because the SA/Vol ratio gets less
About 600 million years ago there came an explosion of life. We find
a huge increase in fossil numbers and forms, partly because some
types developed shells and other hard body parts that fossilized well
Even today, there are some religious groups who reject the entire
concept of the Evolution of Life because they interpret their
traditional, cultural or religious stories of creation very literally
The belief is that evolution happened, but under Gods control and
supervision, along a pathway he ordained