Hostname: page-component-669899f699-swprf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T12:47:51.598Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Role of stellar physics in regulating the critical steps for life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2019

Manasvi Lingam  and
Abraham Loeb
Manasvi Lingam*
Affiliation:
Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University, 60 Garden St, Cambridge MA 02138, USA
Abraham Loeb
Affiliation:
Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University, 60 Garden St, Cambridge MA 02138, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Manasvi Lingam, E-mail: manasvi.lingam@cfa.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We use the critical step model to study the major transitions in evolution on Earth. We find that a total of five steps represents the most plausible estimate, in agreement with previous studies, and use the fossil record to identify the potential candidates. We apply the model to Earth-analogs around stars of different masses by incorporating the constraints on habitability set by stellar physics including the habitable zone lifetime, availability of ultraviolet radiation for prebiotic chemistry, and atmospheric escape. The critical step model suggests that the habitability of Earth-analogs around M-dwarfs is significantly suppressed. The total number of stars with planets containing detectable biosignatures of microbial life is expected to be highest for K-dwarfs. In contrast, we find that the corresponding value for intelligent life (technosignatures) should be highest for solar-mass stars. Thus, our work may assist in the identification of suitable targets in the search for biosignatures and technosignatures.

Keywords

Atmospheric escapeHabitabilityHabitable zoneMajor evolutionary transitionsOrigin of lifePrebiotic chemistry
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 18 , Issue 6 , December 2019 , pp. 527 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abramov, O and Mojzsis, SJ (2009) Microbial habitability of the Hadean Earth during the late heavy bombardment. Nature 459, 419–422.Google Scholar
Adams, FC and Laughlin, G (1997) A dying universe: the long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects. Reviews of Modern Physics 69, 337–372.Google Scholar
Airapetian, VS, Glocer, A, Khazanov, GV, Loyd, ROP, France, K, Sojka, J, Danchi, WC and Liemohn, MW (2017) How hospitable are space weather affected habitable zones? The role of ion escape. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 836, L3.Google Scholar
Akanuma, S, Nakajima, Y, Yokobori, S, Kimura, M, Nemoto, N, Mase, T, Miyazono, K, Tanokura, M and Yamagishi, A (2013) Experimental evidence for the thermophilicity of ancestral life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, 11067–11072.Google Scholar
Albani, AE, Bengtson, S, Canfield, DE, Bekker, A, Macchiarelli, R, Mazurier, A, Hammarlund, EU, Boulvais, P, Dupuy, J-J, Fontaine, C, Fürsich, FT, Gauthier-Lafaye, F, Janvier, P, Javaux, E, Ossa, FO, Pierson-Wickmann, A-C, Riboulleau, A, Sardini, P, Vachard, D, Whitehouse, M and Meunier, A (2010) Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago. Nature 466, 100–104.Google Scholar
Allen, JF and Martin, W (2007) Out of thin air. Nature 445, 610–612.Google Scholar
Anglada-Escudé, G, Amado, PJ, Barnes, J, Berdiñas, ZM, Butler, RP, Coleman, GAL, de La Cueva, I, Dreizler, S, Endl, M, Giesers, B, Jeffers, SV, Jenkins, JS, Jones, HRA, Kiraga, M, Kürster, M, López-González, MJ, Marvin, CJ, Morales, N, Morin, J, Nelson, RP, Ortiz, JL, Ofir, A, Paardekooper, S-J, Reiners, A, Rodríguez, E, Rodríguez-López, C, Sarmiento, LF, Strachan, JP, Tsapras, Y, Tuomi, M and Zechmeister, M (2016) A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri. Nature 536, 437–440.Google Scholar
Archibald, JM (2009) The puzzle of plastid evolution. Current Biology 19, R81–R88.Google Scholar
Archibald, JM (2015) Endosymbiosis and Eukaryotic cell evolution. Current Biology 25, R911–R921.Google Scholar
Arndt, NT and Nisbet, EG (2012) Processes on the young earth and the habitats of early life. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 40, 521–549.Google Scholar
Arrhenius, S (1908) Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe. New York, NY, USA: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Bada, JL and Lazcano, A (2002) Some like it hot, but not the first biomolecules. Science 296, 1982–1983.Google Scholar
Bailer-Jones, CAL (2009) The evidence for and against astronomical impacts on climate change and mass extinctions: a review. International Journal of Astrobiology 8, 213–219.Google Scholar
Bains, W and Schulze-Makuch, D (2015) Mechanisms of evolutionary innovation point to genetic control logic as the key difference between Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes. Journal of Molecular Evolution 81, 34–53.Google Scholar
Bains, W and Schulze-Makuch, D (2016) The cosmic zoo: the (near) inevitability of the evolution of complex, macroscopic life. Life 6, 25.Google Scholar
Barks, HL, Buckley, R, Grieves, GA, Di Mauro, E, Hud, NV and Orlando, TM (2010) Guanine, Adenine, and Hypoxanthine production in UV-irradiated formamide solutions: relaxation of the requirements for prebiotic purine nucleobase formation. ChemBioChem 11, 1240–1243.Google Scholar
Barnosky, AD, Matzke, N, Tomiya, S, Wogan, GOU, Swartz, B, Quental, TB, Marshall, C, McGuire, JL, Lindsey, EL, Maguire, KC, Mersey, B and Ferrer, EA (2011) Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived? Nature 471, 51–57.Google Scholar
Barnosky, AD, Hadly, EA, Bascompte, J, Berlow, EL, Brown, JH, Fortelius, M, Getz, WM, Harte, J, Hastings, A, Marquet, PA, Martinez, ND, Mooers, A, Roopnarine, P, Vermeij, G, Williams, JW, Gillespie, R, Kitzes, J, Marshall, C, Matzke, N, Mindell, DP, Revilla, E and Smith, AB (2012) Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere. Nature 486, 52–58.Google Scholar
Baross, JA and Hoffman, SE (1985) Submarine hydrothermal vents and associated gradient environments as sites for the origin and evolution of life. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 15, 327–345.Google Scholar
Barrow, JD and Tipler, FJ (1986) The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Bastian, N, Covey, KR and Meyer, MR (2010) A universal stellar initial mass function? A critical look at variations. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 48, 339–389.Google Scholar
Batalha, NM (2014) Exploring exoplanet populations with NASA's Kepler mission. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, 12647–12654.Google Scholar
Battistuzzi, FU, Feijao, A and Hedges, SB (2004) A genomic timescale of prokaryote evolution: insights into the origin of methanogenesis, phototrophy, and the colonization of land. BMC Evolutionary Biology 4, 44.Google Scholar
Beckstead, AA, Zhang, Y, de Vries, MS and Kohler, B (2016) Life in the light: nucleic acid photoproperties as a legacy of chemical evolution. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 18, 24228–24238.Google Scholar
Bekoff, M and Pierce, J (2009) Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago, IL, USA: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Belbruno, E, Moro-Martín, A, Malhotra, R and Savransky, D (2012) Chaotic exchange of solid material between planetary systems: implications for Lithopanspermia. Astrobiology 12, 754–774.Google Scholar
Bell, EA, Boehnke, P, Harrison, TM and Mao, WL (2015) Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 14518–14521.Google Scholar
Bengtson, S, Sallstedt, T, Belivanova, V and Whitehouse, M (2017) Three-dimensional preservation of cellular and subcellular structures suggests 1.6 billion-year-old crown-group red algae. PLOS Biology 15, e2000735.Google Scholar
Benner, SA, Kim, H-J and Carrigan, MA (2012) Asphalt, water, and the prebiotic synthesis of Ribose, Ribonucleosides, and RNA. Accounts of Chemical Research 45, 2025–2034.Google Scholar
Berwick, RC and Chomsky, N (2016) Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. Cambridge, MA, USA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Blackman, EG and Tarduno, JA (2018) Mass, energy, and momentum capture from stellar winds by magnetized and unmagnetized planets: implications for atmospheric erosion and habitability. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 481, 5146–5155.Google Scholar
Blättler, CL, Claire, MW, Prave, AR, Kirsimäe, K, Higgins, JA, Medvedev, PV, Romashkin, AE, Rychanchik, DV, Zerkle, AL, Paiste, K, Kreitsmann, T, Millar, IL, Hayles, JA, Bao, H, Turchyn, AV, Warke, MR and Lepland, A (2018) Two-billion-year-old evaporites capture Earth's great oxidation. Science 360, 320–323.Google Scholar
Bogonovich, M (2011) Intelligence's likelihood and evolutionary time frame. International Journal of Astrobiology 10, 113–122.Google Scholar
Bonfio, C, Valer, L, Scintilla, S, Shah, S, Evans, DJ, Jin, L, Szostak, JW, Sasselov, DD, Sutherland, JD and Mansy, SS (2017) UV-light-driven prebiotic synthesis of iron–sulfur clusters. Nature Chemistry 9, 1229–1234.Google Scholar
Bontognali, TRR, Sessions, AL, Allwood, AC, Fischer, WW, Grotzinger, JP, Summons, RE and Eiler, JM (2012) From the cover: sulfur isotopes of organic matter preserved in 3.45-billion-year-old stromatolites reveal microbial metabolism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109, 15146–15151.Google Scholar
Booth, A and Doolittle, WF (2015) Eukaryogenesis, how special really? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 10278–10285.Google Scholar
Borucki, WJ (2016) KEPLER mission: development and overview. Reports on Progress in Physics 79, 036901.Google Scholar
Borucki, WJ, Koch, D, Basri, G, Batalha, N, Brown, T, Caldwell, D, Caldwell, J, Christensen-Dalsgaard, J, Cochran, WD, DeVore, E, Dunham, EW, Dupree, AK, Gautier, TN, Geary, JC, Gilliland, R, Gould, A, Howell, SB, Jenkins, JM, Kondo, Y, Latham, DW, Marcy, GW, Meibom, S, Kjeldsen, H, Lissauer, JJ, Monet, DG, Morrison, D, Sasselov, D, Tarter, J, Boss, A, Brownlee, D, Owen, T, Buzasi, D, Charbonneau, D, Doyle, L, Fortney, J, Ford, EB, Holman, MJ, Seager, S, Steffen, JH, Welsh, WF, Rowe, J, Anderson, H, Buchhave, L, Ciardi, D, Walkowicz, L, Sherry, W, Horch, E, Isaacson, H, Everett, ME, Fischer, D, Torres, G, Johnson, JA, Endl, M, MacQueen, P, Bryson, ST, Dotson, J, Haas, M, Kolodziejczak, J, Van Cleve, J, Chandrasekaran, H, Twicken, JD, Quintana, EV, Clarke, BD, Allen, C, Li, J, Wu, H, Tenenbaum, P, Verner, E, Bruhweiler, F, Barnes, J and Prsa, A (2010) Kepler planet-detection mission: introduction and first results. Science 327, 977–980.Google Scholar
Bostrom, N (2014) Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bottke, WF and Norman, MD (2017) The late heavy bombardment. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 45, 619–647.Google Scholar
Boyd, R, Richerson, PJ and Henrich, J (2011) The cultural niche: why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(Supplement 2), 10918–10925.Google Scholar
Bradbury, RJ, Cirkovic, MM and Dvorsky, G (2011) Dysonian approach to SETI: a fruitful middle ground? Journal of the British interplanetary Society 64, 156–165.Google Scholar
Brain, DA, Bagenal, F, Ma, Y-J, Nilsson, H and Stenberg Wieser, G (2016) Atmospheric escape from unmagnetized bodies. Journal of Geophysical Research E 121, 2364–2385.Google Scholar
Brasier, MD, Antcliffe, J, Saunders, M and Wacey, D (2015) Changing the picture of Earth's earliest fossils (3.5–1.9 Ga) with new approaches and new discoveries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 4859–4864.Google Scholar
Brocks, JJ, Logan, GA, Buick, R and Summons, RE (1999) Archean molecular fossils and the early rise of Eukaryotes. Science 285, 1033–1036.Google Scholar
Buccino, AP, Lemarchand, GA and Mauas, PJD (2007) UV habitable zones around M stars. Icarus 192, 582–587.Google Scholar
Buick, R (2008) When did oxygenic photosynthesis evolve? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, 2731–2743.Google Scholar
Burchell, MJ (2004) Panspermia today. International Journal of Astrobiology 3, 73–80.Google Scholar
Butterfield, NJ (2000) Bangiomorpha pubescens n. gen., n. sp.: implications for the evolution of sex, multicellularity, and the Mesoproterozoic/Neoproterozoic radiation of eukaryotes. Paleobiology 26, 386–404.Google Scholar
Butterfield, NJ (2007) Macroevolution and Macroecology through deep time. Palaeontology 50, 41–55.Google Scholar
Butterfield, NJ (2011) Animals and the invention of the Phanerozoic Earth system. Trends in ecology and evolution 26, 81–87.Google Scholar
Butterfield, NJ (2015) Early evolution of the Eukaryota. Palaeontology 58, 5–17.Google Scholar
Cabrol, NA (2016) Alien mindscapes–a perspective on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Astrobiology 16, 661–676.Google Scholar
Cadet, J, Sage, E and Douki, T (2005) Ultraviolet radiation-mediated damage to cellular DNA. Mutation Research 571, 3–17.Google Scholar
Calcott, B and Sterelny, K (2011) The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. Cambridge, MA, USA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Caldeira, K and Kasting, JF (1992) The life span of the biosphere revisited. Nature 360, 721–723.Google Scholar
Cantine, MD and Fournier, GP (2018) Environmental adaptation from the origin of life to the last universal common ancestor. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 48, 35–54.Google Scholar
Carroll, SB (2001) Chance and necessity: the evolution of morphological complexity and diversity. Nature 409, 1102–1109.Google Scholar
Carter, B (1983) The Anthropic principle and its implications for biological evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 310, 347–363.Google Scholar
Carter, B (2008) Five- or six-step scenario for evolution? International Journal of Astrobiology 7, 177–182.Google Scholar
Catling, DC, Glein, CR, Zahnle, KJ and McKay, CP (2005) Why O2 is required by complex life on habitable planets and the concept of planetary ‘Oxygenation Time’. Astrobiology 5, 415–438.Google Scholar
Chen, J and Kipping, D (2018) On the rate of abiogenesis from a Bayesian informatics perspective. Astrobiology 18, 1574–1584.Google Scholar
Chen, X, Ling, H-F, Vance, D, Shields-Zhou, GA, Zhu, M, Poulton, SW, Och, LM, Jiang, S-Y, Li, D, Cremonese, L and Archer, C (2015) Rise to modern levels of ocean oxygenation coincided with the Cambrian radiation of animals. Nature Communications 6, 7142.Google Scholar
Chen, H, Forbes, JC and Loeb, A (2018) Habitable evaporated cores and the occurrence of Panspermia near the galactic center. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 855, L1.Google Scholar
Chyba, C and Sagan, C (1992) Endogenous production, exogenous delivery and impact-shock synthesis of organic molecules: an inventory for the origins of life. Nature 355, 125–132.Google Scholar
Clarke, JT, Warnock, R and Donoghue, PCJ (2011) Establishing a timescale for plant evolution. Phytologist 192, 266–301.Google Scholar
Cockell, CS, Bush, T, Bryce, C, Direito, S, Fox-Powell, M, Harrison, JP, Lammer, H, Landenmark, H, Martin-Torres, J, Nicholson, N, Noack, L, O'Malley-James, J, Payler, SJ, Rushby, A, Samuels, T, Schwendner, P, Wadsworth, J and Zorzano, MP (2016) Habitability: a review. Astrobiology 16, 89–117.Google Scholar
Corballis, MC (2011) The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cranmer, SR (2017) Mass-loss rates from coronal mass ejections:predictive theoretical model for solar-type stars. The Astrophysical Journal 840, 114.Google Scholar
Crawford, IA (1990) Interstellar travel: a review for Astronomers. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 31, 377–400.Google Scholar
Crespo-Hernández, CE, Cohen, B, Hare, PM and Kohler, B (2004) Ultrafast excited-state dynamics in nucleic acids. Chem. Rev.Chemistry Reviews 104, 1977–2020.Google Scholar
Crick, FHC and Orgel, LE (1973) Directed panspermia. Icarus 19, 341–346.Google Scholar
Crowe, SA, Døssing, LN, Beukes, NJ, Bau, M, Kruger, SJ, Frei, R and Canfield, DE (2013) Atmospheric oxygenation three billion years ago. Nature 501, 535–538.Google Scholar
Cunningham, JA, Liu, AG, Bengtson, S and Donoghue, PCJ (2017) The origin of animals: can molecular clocks and the fossil record be reconciled? BioEssays 39, 1–12.Google Scholar
Cuntz, M and Guinan, EF (2016) About exobiology: the case for dwarf K stars. The Astrophysical Journal 827, 79.Google Scholar
Dacks, JB, Field, MC, Buick, R, Eme, L, Gribaldo, S, Roger, AJ, Brochier-Armanet, C and Devos, DP (2016) The changing view of eukaryogenesis–fossils, cells, lineages and how they all come together. Journal of Cell Science 129, 3695–3703.Google Scholar
Danovaro, R, Dell'Anno, A, Pusceddu, A, Gambi, C, Heiner, I and Kristensen, RM (2010) The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions. BMC Biology 8, 30.Google Scholar
Danovaro, R, Gambi, C, Dell'Anno, A, Corinaldesi, C, Pusceddu, A, Neves, RC and Kristensen, RM (2016) The challenge of proving the existence of metazoan life in permanently anoxic deep-sea sediments. BMC Biology 14, 43.Google Scholar
Dartnell, LR (2011) Ionizing radiation and life. Astrobiology 11, 551–582.Google Scholar
Davies, PCW (2003) Does life's rapid appearance imply a martian origin? Astrobiology 3, 673–679.Google Scholar
de Duve, C (2005) Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Waal, F (2016) Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? New York, NY, USA: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Deacon, TW (1998) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York, NY, USA: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Deamer, D and Damer, B (2017) Can life begin on Enceladus? A perspective from hydrothermal chemistry. Astrobiology 17, 834–839.Google Scholar
Deamer, D and Weber, AL (2010) Bioenergetics and life's origins. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2, a004929.Google Scholar
Dennett, DC (2017) From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. New York, NY, USA: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Di Stefano, R and Ray, A (2016) Globular clusters as cradles of life and advanced civilizations. The Astrophysical Journal 827, 54.Google Scholar
Diamond, J (1997) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York, NY, USA: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Dibrova, DV, Chudetsky, MY, Galperin, MY, Koonin, EV and Mulkidjanian, AY (2012) The role of energy in the emergence of biology from chemistry. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 42, 459–468.Google Scholar
Djokic, T, van Kranendonk, MJ, Campbell, KA, Walter, MR and Ward, CR (2017) Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits. Nature Communications 8, 15263.Google Scholar
Dodd, MS, Papineau, D, Grenne, T, Slack, JF, Rittner, M, Pirajno, F, O'Neil, J and Little, CTS (2017) Evidence for early life in Earth's oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates. Nature 543, 60–64.Google Scholar
Dole, SH (1964) Habitable Planets for Man. New York, NY, USA: Blaisdell Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Dong, C, Huang, Z, Lingam, M, Tóth, G, Gombosi, T and Bhattacharjee, A (2017a) The dehydration of water worlds via atmospheric losses. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 847, L4.Google Scholar
Dong, C, Lingam, M, Ma, Y and Cohen, O (2017b) Is Proxima Centauri b habitable? A study of atmospheric loss. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 837, L26.Google Scholar
Dong, C, Jin, M, Lingam, M, Airapetian, VS, Ma, Y and van der Holst, B (2018a) Atmospheric escape from the TRAPPIST-1 planets and implications for habitability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115, 260–265.Google Scholar
Dong, C, Lee, Y, Ma, Y, Lingam, M, Bougher, S, Luhmann, J, Curry, S, Toth, G, Nagy, A, Tenishev, V, Fang, X, Mitchell, D, Brain, D and Jakosky, B (2018b) Modeling martian atmospheric losses over time: implications for exoplanetary climate evolution and habitability. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 859, L14.Google Scholar
Douzery, EJP, Snell, EA, Bapteste, E, Delsuc, F and Philippe, H (2004) The timing of eukaryotic evolution: Does a relaxed molecular clock reconcile proteins and fossils? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101, 15386–15391.Google Scholar
Drake, JJ, Cohen, O, Yashiro, S and Gopalswamy, N (2013) Implications of mass and energy loss due to Coronal Mass Ejections on magnetically active stars. The Astrophysical Journal 764, 170.Google Scholar
Eigenbrode, JL and Freeman, KH (2006) Late Archean rise of aerobic microbial ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, 15759–15764.Google Scholar
Ellis, EC, Kaplan, JO, Fuller, DQ, Vavrus, S, Klein Goldewijk, K and Verburg, PH (2013) Used planet: a global history. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, 7978–7985.Google Scholar
Embley, TM and Martin, W (2006) Eukaryotic evolution, changes and challenges. Nature 440, 623–630.Google Scholar
Eme, L, Sharpe, SC, Brown, MW and Roger, AJ (2014) On the age of Eukaryotes: evaluating evidence from fossils and molecular clocks. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6, a016139.Google Scholar
Eme, L, Spang, A, Lombard, J, Stairs, CW and Ettema, TJG (2017) Archaea and the origin of eukaryotes. Nature Reviews Microbiology 15, 711–723.Google Scholar
Erwin, DH, Laflamme, M, Tweedt, SM, Sperling, EA, Pisani, D and Peterson, KJ (2011) The Cambrian Conundrum: early divergence and later ecological success in the early history of animals. Science 334, 1091–1097.Google Scholar
Evans, KL and Gaston, KJ (2005) Can the evolutionary rates hypothesis explain species energy relationships? Functional Ecology 19, 899–915.Google Scholar
Falcón, LI, Magallón, S and Castillo, A (2010) Dating the cyanobacterial ancestor of the chloroplast. The ISME Journal 4, 777–783.Google Scholar
Falkowski, PG, Katz, ME, Knoll, AH, Quigg, A, Raven, JA, Schofield, O and Taylor, FJR (2004) The evolution of modern Eukaryotic Phytoplankton. Science 305, 354–360.Google Scholar
Farquhar, J, Zerkle, AL and Bekker, A (2011) Geological constraints on the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis. Photosynthesis Research 107, 11–36.Google Scholar
Fischer, WW, Hemp, J and Johnson, JE (2016a) Evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 44, 647–683.Google Scholar
Fischer, WW, Hemp, J and Valentine, JS (2016b) How did life survive Earth's great oxygenation? Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. 31, 166–178.Google Scholar
Flannery, DT, Allwood, AC, Summons, RE, Williford, KH, Abbey, W, Matys, ED and Ferralis, N (2018) Spatially-resolved isotopic study of carbon trapped in ~3.43 Ga Strelley Pool Formation stromatolites. Geochimica Et Cosmochimica Acta 223, 21–35.Google Scholar
Franck, S, Block, A, von Bloh, W, Bounama, C, Schellnhuber, HJ and Svirezhev, Y (2000) Reduction of biosphere life span as a consequence of geodynamics. Tellus B 52, 94–107.Google Scholar
Franck, S, Bounama, C and von Bloh, W (2006) Causes and timing of future biosphere extinctions. Biogeosciences 3, 85–92.Google Scholar
Frank, A and Sullivan, W (2014) Sustainability and the astrobiological perspective: framing human futures in a planetary context. Anthropocene 5, 32–41.Google Scholar
Frank, A, Kleidon, A and Alberti, M (2017) Earth as a hybrid planet: the Anthropocene in an evolutionary astrobiological context. Anthropocene 19, 13–21.Google Scholar
Frank, A, Carroll-Nellenback, J, Alberti, M and Kleidon, A (2018) The Anthropocene generalized: evolution of exo-civilizations and their planetary feedback. Astrobiology 18, 503–518.Google Scholar
Frei, R, Crowe, SA, Bau, M, Polat, A, Fowle, DA and Døssing, LN (2016) Oxidative elemental cycling under the low O2 Eoarchean atmosphere. Science Reports 6, 21058.Google Scholar
French, KL, Hallmann, C, Hope, JM, Schoon, PL, Zumberge, JA, Hoshino, Y, Peters, CA, George, SC, Love, GD, Brocks, JJ, Buick, R and Summons, RE (2015) Reappraisal of hydrocarbon biomarkers in Archean rocks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 5915–5920.Google Scholar
Fujii, Y, Angerhausen, D, Deitrick, R, Domagal-Goldman, S, Grenfell, JL, Hori, Y, Kane, SR, Pallé, E, Rauer, H, Siegler, N, Stapelfeldt, K and Stevenson, KB (2018) Exoplanet Biosignatures: observational prospects. Astrobiology 18, 739–778.Google Scholar
Furukawa, Y, Nakazawa, H, Sekine, T, Kobayashi, T and Kakegawa, T (2015) Nucleobase and amino acid formation through impacts of meteorites on the early ocean. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 429, 216–222.Google Scholar
Garraffo, C, Drake, JJ and Cohen, O (2016) The space weather of Proxima Centauri b. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 833, L4.Google Scholar
Garraffo, C, Drake, JJ, Cohen, O, Alvarado-Gómez, JD and Moschou, SP (2017) The threatening magnetic and plasma environment of the TRAPPIST-1 planets. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 843, L33.Google Scholar
Gensel, PG (2008) The earliest land plants. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 39, 459–477.Google Scholar
Gilbert, W (1986) Origin of life: The RNA world. Nature 319, 618.Google Scholar
Gillon, M, Jehin, E, Lederer, SM, Delrez, L, de Wit, J, Burdanov, A, Van Grootel, V, Burgasser, AJ, Triaud, AHMJ, Opitom, C, Demory, B-O, Sahu, DK, Bardalez Gagliuffi, D, Magain, P and Queloz, D (2016) Temperate Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star. Nature 533, 221–224.Google Scholar
Gillon, M, Triaud, AHMJ, Demory, B-O, Jehin, E, Agol, E, Deck, KM, Lederer, SM, de Wit, J, Burdanov, A, Ingalls, JG, Bolmont, E, Leconte, J, Raymond, SN, Selsis, F, Turbet, M, Barkaoui, K, Burgasser, A, Burleigh, MR, Carey, SJ, Chaushev, A, Copperwheat, CM, Delrez, L, Fernandes, CS, Holdsworth, DL, Kotze, EJ, Van Grootel, V, Almleaky, Y, Benkhaldoun, Z, Magain, P and Queloz, D (2017) Seven temperate terrestrial planets around the nearby ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Nature, 542, 456–460.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, I, Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018) Galactic Panspermia. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 868, L12.Google Scholar
Gladman, B, Dones, L, Levison, HF and Burns, JA (2005) Impact seeding and reseeding in the inner solar system. Astrobiology 5, 483–496.Google Scholar
Gold, DA, Caron, A, Fournier, GP and Summons, RE (2017) Paleoproterozoic sterol biosynthesis and the rise of oxygen. Nature 543, 420–423.Google Scholar
Goldblatt, C and Watson, AJ (2012) The runaway greenhouse: implications for future climate change, geoengineering and planetary atmospheres. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 370, 4197–4216.Google Scholar
Gomes, R, Levison, HF, Tsiganis, K and Morbidelli, A (2005) Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets. Nature 435, 466–469.Google Scholar
Gould, SJ (1996) Full House. Harmony Books.Google Scholar
Gould, SJ (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, SB, Waller, RF and McFadden, GI (2008) Plastid Evolution. Annual Review of Plant Biology 59, 491–517.Google Scholar
Gray, MW, Burger, G and Lang, BF (1999) Mitochondrial evolution. Science 283, 1476–1481.Google Scholar
Griffin, DR (2001) Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness. Chicago, IL, USA: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grimm, RE and Marchi, S (2018) Direct thermal effects of the Hadean bombardment did not limit early subsurface habitability. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 485, 1–8.Google Scholar
Grosberg, RK and Strathmann, RR (2007) The evolution of multicellularity: a minor major transition? Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 38, 621–654.Google Scholar
Gumsley, AP, Chamberlain, KR, Bleeker, W, Söderlund, U, de Kock, MO, Larsson, ER and Bekker, A (2017) Timing and tempo of the Great Oxidation Event. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, 1811–1816.Google Scholar
Gunell, H, Maggiolo, R, Nilsson, H, Stenberg Wieser, G, Slapak, R, Lindkvist, J, Hamrin, M and De Keyser, J (2018) Why an intrinsic magnetic field does not protect a planet against atmospheric escape. Astronomy and Astrophysics 614, L3.Google Scholar
Günther, MN, Zhan, Z, Seager, S, Rimmer, PB, Ranjan, S, Stassun, KG, Oelkers, RJ, Daylan, T, Newton, E, Gillen, E, Rappaport, S, Ricker, GR, Latham, DW, Winn, JN, Jenkins, JM, Glidden, A, Fausnaugh, M, Levine, AM, Dittmann, JA, Quinn, SN, Krishnamurthy, A and Ting, EB (2019) Stellar flares from the first tess data release: exploring a new sample of M-dwarfs. The Astrophysical Journal arXiv:1901.00443.Google Scholar
Gustavsson, T, Improta, R and Markovitsi, D (2010) DNA/RNA: building blocks of life under UV irradiation. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 1, 2025–2030.Google Scholar
Han, T-M and Runnegar, B (1992) Megascopic Eukaryotic Algae from the 2.1-billion-year-old Negaunee Iron-Formation, Michigan. Science 257, 232–235.Google Scholar
Haqq-Misra, J, Kopparapu, RK and Wolf, ET (2018) Why do we find ourselves around a yellow star instead of a red star? International Journal of Astrobiology 17, 77–86.Google Scholar
Harrison, TM (2009) The Hadean crust: evidence from >4 Ga Zircons. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 37, 479–505.4+Ga+Zircons.+Annual+Review+of+Earth+and+Planetary+Sciences+37,+479–505.>Google Scholar
Hauser, MD, Yang, C, Berwick, RC, Tattersall, I, Ryan, MJ, Watumull, J, Chomsky, N and Lewontin, RC (2014) The mystery of language evolution. Frontiers in Psychology 5, 401.Google Scholar
Heckman, DS, Geiser, DM, Eidell, BR, Stauffer, RL, Kardos, NL and Hedges, SB (2001) Molecular evidence for the early colonization of land by fungi and plants. Science 293, 1129–1133.Google Scholar
Hedges, SB and Kumar, S (2009) The Timetree of Life. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hedges, SB, Blair, JE, Venturi, ML and Shoe, JL (2004) A molecular timescale of eukaryote evolution and the rise of complex multicellular life. BMC Evolutionary Biology 4, 2.Google Scholar
Heller, R and Armstrong, J (2014) Superhabitable worlds. Astrobiology 14, 50–66.Google Scholar
Henrich, J (2016) The Secret of Our Success. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Heyes, CM and Frith, CD (2014) The cultural evolution of mind reading. Science 344, 1243091.Google Scholar
Higgs, PG and Lehman, N (2015) The RNA world: molecular cooperation at the origins of life. Nature Reviews Genetics 16, 7–17.Google Scholar
Hohmann-Marriott, MF and Blankenship, RE (2011) Evolution of photosynthesis. Annual Review of Plant Biology 62, 515–548.Google Scholar
Holland, HD, (2006) The oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361, 903–915.Google Scholar
Horner, J and Jones, BW (2010) Determining habitability: which exo-Earths should we search for life. International Journal of Astrobiology 9, 273–291.Google Scholar
Howard, WS, Tilley, MA, Corbett, H, Youngblood, A, Loyd, ROP, Ratzloff, JK, Law, NM, Fors, O, del Ser, D, Shkolnik, EL, Ziegler, C, Goeke, EE, Pietraallo, AD and Haislip, J (2018) The first naked-eye superflare detected from Proxima Centauri. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 860, L30.Google Scholar
Huang, S-S (1959) Occurrence of life in the universe. American Journal of Science 47, 397–402.Google Scholar
Isaacson, H, Siemion, APV, Marcy, GW, Lebofsky, M, Price, DC, MacMahon, D, Croft, S, DeBoer, D, Hickish, J, Werthimer, D, Sheikh, S, Hellbourg, G and Enriquez, JE (2017) The breakthrough listen search for intelligent life: target selection of nearby stars and galaxies. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 129, 054501.Google Scholar
Islam, S and Powner, MW (2017) Prebiotic systems chemistry: complexity overcoming clutter. Chem 2, 470–501.Google Scholar
Jablonka, E and Lamb, MJ (2006) The evolution of information in the major transitions. Journal of Theoretical Biology 239, 236–246.Google Scholar
Jakosky, BM, Slipski, M, Benna, M, Mahaffy, P, Elrod, M, Yelle, R, Stone, S and Alsaeed, N (2017) Mars' atmospheric history derived from upper-atmosphere measurements of38Ar/36Ar. Science 355, 1408–1410.Google Scholar
Javaux, EJ and Dehant, V (2010) Habitability: from stars to cells. Astronomy And Astrophysics Review 18, 383–416.Google Scholar
Javaux, EJ and Knoll, AH (2017) Micropaleontology of the lower Mesoproterozoic Roper Group, Australia, and implications for early eukaryotic evolution. Journal of Paleontology 91, 199–229.Google Scholar
Joyce, GF (2002) The antiquity of RNA-based evolution. Nature 418, 214–221.Google Scholar
Judson, OP (2017) The energy expansions of evolution. Nature Ecology and Evolution 1, 0138.Google Scholar
Kaltenegger, L (2017) How to characterize Habitable worlds and signs of life. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 55, 433–485.Google Scholar
Kasting, J (2010) How to Find a Habitable Planet. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kasting, JF and Catling, D (2003) Evolution of a Habitable planet. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 41, 429–463.Google Scholar
Kasting, JF, Whitmire, DP and Reynolds, RT (1993) Habitable zones around main sequence stars. Icarus 101, 108–128.Google Scholar
Kay, C, Opher, M and Kornbleuth, M (2016) Probability of CME impact on exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs and solar-like stars. The Astrophysical Journal 826, 195.Google Scholar
Kaźmierczak, J, Kremer, B, Altermann, W and Franchi, I (2016) Tubular microfossils from ~2.8 to 2.7 Ga-old lacustrine deposits of South Africa: a sign for early origin of eukaryotes? Precambrian Research 286, 180–194.Google Scholar
Keeling, PJ (2010) The endosymbiotic origin, diversification and fate of plastids. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, 729–748.Google Scholar
Khodachenko, ML, Ribas, I, Lammer, H, Grießmeier, J -M, Leitner, M, Selsis, F, Eiroa, C, Hanslmeier, A, Biernat, HK, Farrugia, CJ and Rucker, HO (2007) Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) activity of low mass M stars as an important factor for the Habitability of terrestrial exoplanets. I. CME impact on expected magnetospheres of earth-like exoplanets in close-in Habitable zones. Astrobiology 7, 167–184.Google Scholar
Kite, ES, Gaidos, E and Onstott, TC (2018) Valuing life-detection missions. Astrobiology 18, 834–840.Google Scholar
Klein, RG (1995) Anatomy, behavior, and modern human origins. Journal of World Prehistory 9, 167–198.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH (1985) The Precambrian evolution of terrestrial life. In Papagiannis, M. D., editor, The Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Recent Developments, volume 112 of IAU Symposium, pp. 201–211.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH (2011) The multiple origins of complex multicellularity. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 39, 217–239.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH (2014) Paleobiological perspectives on early eukaryotic evolution. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6, a016121.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH (2015a) Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth. Princeton Science Library. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH (2015b) Paleobiological perspectives on early microbial evolution. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 7, a018093.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH (2017) Food for early animal evolution. Nature 548, 528–530.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH and Bambach, RK (2000) Directionality in the history of life: diffusion from the left wall or repeated scaling of the right? Paleobiology 26(sp4), 1–14.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH and Nowak, MA (2017) The timetable of evolution. Science Advances 3, e1603076.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH and Sperling, EA (2014) Oxygen and animals in Earth history. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, 3907–3908.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH, Javaux, EJ, Hewitt, D and Cohen, P (2006) Eukaryotic organisms in Proterozoic oceans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361, 1023–1038.Google Scholar
Knoll, AH, Bergmann, KD and Strauss, JV (2016) Life: the first two billion years. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371, 20150493.Google Scholar
Koch, LG and Britton, SL (2008) Aerobic metabolism underlies complexity and capacity. Journal of Physiology 586, 83–95.Google Scholar
Koonin, EV (2007) The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution. Biology Direct 2, 21.Google Scholar
Koonin, EV (2010) The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes in the light of phylogenomics. Genome Biology 11, 209.Google Scholar
Kopparapu, RK, Ramirez, R, Kasting, JF, Eymet, V, Robinson, TD, Mahadevan, S, Terrien, RC, Domagal-Goldman, S, Meadows, V and Deshpande, R (2013) Habitable zones around main-sequence stars: new estimates. The Astrophysical Journal 765, 131.Google Scholar
Kopparapu, RK, Ramirez, RM, SchottelKotte, J, Kasting, JF, Domagal-Goldman, S and Eymet, V (2014) Habitable zones around main-sequence stars: dependence on planetary mass. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 787, L29.Google Scholar
Krissansen-Totton, J, Olson, S and Catling, DC (2018) Disequilibrium biosignatures over Earth history and implications for detecting exoplanet life. Science Advances 4, eaao5747.Google Scholar
Kroupa, P (2001) On the variation of the initial mass function. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 322, 231–246.Google Scholar
Laakso, TA and Schrag, DP (2018) Limitations on Limitation. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 32, 486–496.Google Scholar
Lake, BM, Ullman, TD, Tenenbaum, JB and Gershman, SJ (2017) Building machines that learn and think like people. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40, e253.Google Scholar
Laland, KN (2017) Darwin's Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Laland, KN and Galef, BG (2009) The Question of Animal Culture. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laland, KN, Uller, T, Feldman, MW, Sterelny, K, Müller, GB, Moczek, A, Jablonka, E and Odling-Smee, J (2015) The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282, 20151019.Google Scholar
Lamb, DM, Awramik, SM, Chapman, DJ and Zhu, S (2009) Evidence for eukaryotic diversification in the ~1800 million-year-old Changzhougou formation, North China. Precambrian Research 173, 93–104.Google Scholar
Lammer, H, Bredehöft, JH, Coustenis, A, Khodachenko, ML, Kaltenegger, L, Grasset, O, Prieur, D, Raulin, F, Ehrenfreund, P, Yamauchi, M, Wahlund, J-E, Grießmeier, J-M, Stangl, G, Cockell, CS, Kulikov, YN, Grenfell, JL and Rauer, H (2009) What makes a planet habitable? Astronomy And Astrophysics Review 17, 181–249.Google Scholar
Lane, N (2009) Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution. London, UK: Profile Books.Google Scholar
Lane, N and Martin, W (2010) The energetics of genome complexity. Nature 467, 929–934.Google Scholar
Lee, Y, Dong, C, Pawlowski, D, Thiemann, E, Tenishev, V, Mahaffy, P, Benna, M, Combi, M, Bougher, S and Eparvier, F (2018) Effects of a solar flare on the Martian Hot O Corona and Photochemical Escape. Geophysical Research Letters 45, 6814–6822.Google Scholar
Lenton, T and Watson, A (2011) Revolutions that Made the Earth. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lenton, TM and von Bloh, W (2001) Biotic feedback extends the life span of the biosphere. Geophysical Research Letters 28, 1715–1718.Google Scholar
Lewis, LA and McCourt, RM (2004) Green algae and the origin of land plants. American Journal of Botany 91, 1535–1556.Google Scholar
Lewis, SL and Maslin, MA (2015) Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519, 171–180.Google Scholar
Lewontin, RC (2000) The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Li, H, Lu, S, Su, W, Xiang, Z, Zhou, H and Zhang, Y (2013) Recent advances in the study of the Mesoproterozoic geochronology in the North China Craton. Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 72, 216–227.Google Scholar
Lineweaver, CH and Davis, TM (2002) Does the rapid appearance of life on Earth suggest that life is common in the Universe ? Astrobiology 2, 293–304.Google Scholar
Lingam, M (2016a) Analytical approaches to modelling panspermia – beyond the mean-field paradigm. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 455, 2792–2803.Google Scholar
Lingam, M (2016b) Interstellar travel and Galactic colonization: insights from Percolation theory and the Yule process. Astrobiology 16, 418–426.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2017a) Enhanced interplanetary panspermia in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, 6689–6693.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2017b) Reduced diversity of life around Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 846, L21.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2017c) Risks for life on Habitable planets from Superflares of their host stars. The Astrophysical Journal 848, 41.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018a) Is extraterrestrial life suppressed on Subsurface Ocean Worlds due to the Paucity of Bioessential elements? The Astronomical Journal 156, 151.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018b) Is life most likely around Sun-like stars? Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 5, 020.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018c) Limitations of chemical propulsion for interstellar escape from Habitable zones around low-mass stars. Research Notes AAS 2, 154.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018d) Optimal target stars in the search for life. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 857, L17.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018e) Physical constraints for the evolution of life on exoplanets. Reviews of Modern Physics (arXiv: 1810.02007).Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018f) Physical constraints on the likelihood of life on exoplanets. International Journal of Astrobiology 17, 116–126.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2018g) Subsurface exolife. International Journal of Astrobiology (arXiv: 1711.09908) doi:10.1017/S1473550418000083.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2019a) Dependence of biological activity on the surface water fraction of planets. The Astronomical Journal 157, 25.Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2019b) Photosynthesis on habitable planets around low-mass stars. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (arXiv: 1901.01270).Google Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2019c) Relative likelihood of success in the search for primitive versus intelligent extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology 19, 28–39.Google Scholar
Lingam, M, Dong, C, Fang, X, Jakosky, BM and Loeb, A (2018h) The Propitious role of solar energetic particles in the origin of life. The Astrophysical Journal 853, 10.Google Scholar
Loeb, A, Batista, RA and Sloan, D (2016) Relative likelihood for life as a function of cosmic time. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 8, 040.Google Scholar
López-García, P and Moreira, D (2015) Open questions on the origin of eukaryotes. Trends in ecology and evolution 30, 697–708.Google Scholar
López-García, P, Eme, L and Moreira, D (2017) Symbiosis in eukaryotic evolution. Journal of Theoretical Biology 434, 20–33.Google Scholar
Love, GD, Grosjean, E, Stalvies, C, Fike, DA, Grotzinger, JP, Bradley, AS, Kelly, AE, Bhatia, M, Meredith, W, Snape, CE, Bowring, SA, Condon, DJ and Summons, RE (2009) Fossil steroids record the appearance of Demospongiae during the Cryogenian period. Nature 457, 718–721.Google Scholar
Lovelock, JE and Whitfield, M (1982) Life span of the biosphere. Nature 296, 561–563.Google Scholar
Lu, W, Ridgwell, A, Thomas, E, Hardisty, DS, Luo, G, Algeo, TJ, Saltzman, MR, Gill, BC, Shen, Y, Ling, H-F, Edwards, CT, Whalen, MT, Zhou, X, Gutchess, KM, Jin, L, Rickaby, REM, Jenkyns, HC, Lyons, TW, Lenton, TM, Kump, LR and Lu, Z (2018) Late inception of a resiliently oxygenated upper ocean. Science 361, 174–177.Google Scholar
Lubin, P (2016) A roadmap to interstellar flight. Journal of the British interplanetary Society 69, 40–72.Google Scholar
Lücking, R, Huhndorf, S, Pfister, DH, Plata, ER and Lumbsch, HT (2009) Fungi evolved right on track. Mycologia 101, 810–822.Google Scholar
Lunine, JI (2013) Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Luo, G, Ono, S, Beukes, NJ, Wang, DT, Xie, S and Summons, RE (2016) Rapid oxygenation of Earths atmosphere 2.33 billion years ago. Science Advances 2, e1600134.Google Scholar
Lynch, M and Marinov, GK (2015) The bioenergetic costs of a gene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 15690–15695.Google Scholar
Lyons, TW, Reinhard, CT and Planavsky, NJ (2014) The rise of oxygen in Earth's early ocean and atmosphere. Nature 506, 307–315.Google Scholar
MacGregor, MA, Weinberger, AJ, Wilner, DJ, Kowalski, AF and Cranmer, SR (2018) Detection of a millimeter flare from Proxima Centauri. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 855, L2.Google Scholar
Magallón, S, Hilu, KW and Quandt, D (2013) Land plant evolutionary timeline: gene effects are secondary to fossil constraints in relaxed clock estimation of age and substitution rates. American Journal of Botany 100, 556–573.Google Scholar
Maloof, AC, Rose, CV, Beach, R, Samuels, BM, Calmet, CC, Erwin, DH, Poirier, GR, Yao, N and Simons, FJ (2010) Possible animal-body fossils in pre-Marinoan limestones from South Australia. Nature Geoscience 3, 653–659.Google Scholar
Margulis, L (1981) Symbiosis in Cell Evolution: Life and Its Environment on the Early Earth. San Francisco, CA, USA: W. H. Freeman & Co.Google Scholar
Martin, W, Baross, J, Kelley, D and Russell, MJ (2008) Hydrothermal vents and the origin of life. Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 805–814.Google Scholar
Martin, WF, Garg, S and Zimorski, V (2015) Endosymbiotic theories for eukaryote origin. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 370, 20140330.Google Scholar
Martin, WF, Tielens, AGM, Mentel, M, Garg, SG and Gould, SB (2017) The physiology of Phagocytosis in the context of Mitochondrial origin. Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews 81, e00008–17.Google Scholar
Martins, Z, Price, MC, Goldman, N, Sephton, MA and Burchell, MJ (2013) Shock synthesis of amino acids from impacting cometary and icy planet surface analogues. Nature Geoscience 6, 1045–1049.Google Scholar
Maruyama, S, Ikoma, M, Genda, H, Hirose, K, Yokoyama, T and Santosh, M (2013) The naked planet Earth: most essential pre-requisite for the origin and evolution of life. Geoscience Frontiers 4, 141–165.Google Scholar
Mautner, MN (1997) Directed Panspermia. 3. strategies and motivation for seeding star-forming clouds. Journal of the British interplanetary Society 50, 93–102.Google Scholar
Mayr, E (1985) The probability of extraterrestrial intelligent life. In Regis, E ed., Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23–30.Google Scholar
McCabe, M and Lucas, H (2010) On the origin and evolution of life in the Galaxy. International Journal of Astrobiology 9, 217–226.Google Scholar
McCollom, TM (2007) Geochemical constraints on sources of metabolic energy for Chemolithoautotrophy in Ultramafic-Hosted deep-sea Hydrothermal systems. Astrobiology 7, 933–950.Google Scholar
McCollom, TM (2013) Miller-Urey and beyond: what have we learned about prebiotic organic synthesis reactions in the past 60 years? Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 41, 207–229.Google Scholar
McCollom, TM and Seewald, JS (2007) Abiotic synthesis of organic compounds in deep-sea hydrothermal environments. Chem. Rev.Chemistry Reviews 107, 382–401.Google Scholar
McGhee, GR (2011) Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful. Cambridge, MA, USA: The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology. The MIT PressGoogle Scholar
McInerney, JO, O'Connell, MJ and Pisani, D (2014) The hybrid nature of the Eukaryota and a consilient view of life on Earth. Nature Reviews Microbiology 12, 449–455.Google Scholar
McShea, DW and Brandon, RN (2010) Biology's First Law. Chicago, IL, USA: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meadows, VS (2017) Reflections on O2 as a biosignature in exoplanetary atmospheres. Astrobiology 17, 1022–1052.Google Scholar
Melott, AL and Thomas, BC (2011) Astrophysical ionizing radiation and Earth: a brief review and census of intermittent intense sources. Astrobiology 11, 343–361.Google Scholar
Miller, SL and Lazcano, A (1995) The origin of life–did it occur at high temperatures? Journal of Molecular Evolution 41, 689–692.Google Scholar
Mills, DB and Canfield, DE (2014a) Oxygen and animal evolution: did a rise of atmospheric oxygen ‘trigger’ the origin of animals? BioEssays 36, 1145–1155.Google Scholar
Mills, DB, Ward, LM, Jones, C, Sweeten, B, Forth, M, Treusch, AH and Canfield, DE (2014b) Oxygen requirements of the earliest animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, 4168–4172.Google Scholar
Monod, J (1971) Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Moore, EK, Jelen, BI, Giovannelli, D, Raanan, H and Falkowski, PG (2017) Metal availability and the expanding network of microbial metabolisms in the Archaean eon. Nature Geoscience 10, 629–636.Google Scholar
Morris, SC (2003) Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morris, JL, Puttick, MN, Clark, JW, Edwards, D, Kenrick, P, Pressel, S, Wellman, CH, Yang, Z, Schneider, H and Donoghue, PCJ (2018) The timescale of early land plant evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115, E2274–E2283.Google Scholar
Mulkidjanian, AY, Cherepanov, DA and Galperin, MY (2003) Survival of the fittest before the beginning of life: selection of the first oligonucleotide-like polymers by UV light. BMC Evolutionary Biology 3, 12.Google Scholar
Mulkidjanian, AY, Koonin, EV, Makarova, KS, Mekhedov, SL, Sorokin, A, Wolf, YI, Dufresne, A, Partensky, F, Burd, H, Kaznadzey, D, Haselkorn, R and Galperin, MY (2006) The cyanobacterial genome core and the origin of photosynthesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, 13126–13131.Google Scholar
Neveu, M, Kim, H-J and Benner, SA (2013) The ‘Strong’ RNA world hypothesis: fifty years old. Astrobiology 13, 391–403.Google Scholar
Newman, WI and Sagan, C (1981) Galactic civilizations – population dynamics and interstellar diffusion. Icarus 46, 293–327.Google Scholar
Newman, DK, Neubauer, C, Ricci, JN, Wu, C -H and Pearson, A (2016) Cellular and molecular biological approaches to interpreting ancient biomarkers. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 44, 493–522.Google Scholar
Noffke, N, Christian, D, Wacey, D and Hazen, RM (2013) Microbially induced sedimentary structures recording an ancient ecosystem in the ca.3.48 billion-year-old dresser formation, Pilbara, Western Australia. Astrobiology 13, 1103–1124.Google Scholar
Nutman, AP, Bennett, VC, Friend, CRL, van Kranendonk, MJ and Chivas, AR (2016) Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures. Nature 537, 535–538.Google Scholar
Och, LM and Shields-Zhou, GA (2012) The Neoproterozoic oxygenation event: environmental perturbations and biogeochemical cycling. Earth Science Reviews 110, 26–57.Google Scholar
Ochoa de Alda, J. A. G., Esteban, R, Diago, ML and Houmard, J (2014) The plastid ancestor originated among one of the major cyanobacterial lineages. Nature Communications 5, 4937.Google Scholar
Odert, P, Leitzinger, M, Hanslmeier, A and Lammer, H (2017) Stellar coronal mass ejections – I. estimating occurrence frequencies and mass-loss rates. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 472, 876–890.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, FJ, Laland, KN and Feldman, MW (2003) Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Number 37 in Monographs in Population Biology. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ohtomo, Y, Kakegawa, T, Ishida, A, Nagase, T and Rosing, MT (2014) Evidence for biogenic graphite in early Archaean Isua metasedimentary rocks. Nature Geoscience 7, 25–28.Google Scholar
O'Malley, MA and Powell, R (2016) Major problems in evolutionary transitions: how a metabolic perspective can enrich our understanding of macroevolution. Biology and Philosophy 31, 159–189.Google Scholar
O'Malley-James, JT and Kaltenegger, L (2017) UV surface habitability of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 469, L26–L30.Google Scholar
Orgel, LE (2004) Prebiotic chemistry and the origin of the RNA world. Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 39, 99–123.Google Scholar
Oró, J, Miller, SL and Lazcano, A (1990) The origin and early evolution of life on Earth. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 18, 317–356.Google Scholar
Parfrey, LW, Lahr, DJG, Knoll, AH and Katz, LA (2011) Estimating the timing of early eukaryotic diversification with multigene molecular clocks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, 13624–13629.Google Scholar
Pascal, R (2012) Suitable energetic conditions for dynamic chemical complexity and the living state. Journal of Systems Chemistry 3, 3.Google Scholar
Patel, BH, Percivalle, C, Ritson, DJ, Duffy, CD and Sutherland, JD (2015) Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism. Nature Chemistry 7, 301–307.Google Scholar
Patsourakos, S and Georgoulis, MK (2017) A helicity-based method to infer the CME magnetic field magnitude in Sun and geospace: generalization and extension to Sun-like and M-dwarf stars and implications for exoplanet habitability. Solar Physics 292, 89.Google Scholar
Payne, JL, Boyer, AG, Brown, JH, Finnegan, S, Kowalewski, M, Krause, RA Jr., Lyons, SK, McClain, CR, McShea, DW, Novack-Gottshall, PM, Smith, FA, Stempien, JA and Wang, SC (2009) Two-phase increase in the maximum size of life over 3.5 billion years reflects biological innovation and environmental opportunity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, 24–27.Google Scholar
Penn, DC, Holyoak, KJ and Povinelli, DJ (2008) Darwin's mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31, 109–130.Google Scholar
Pittis, AA and Gabaldón, T (2016) Late acquisition of mitochondria by a host with chimaeric prokaryotic ancestry. Nature 531, 101–104.Google Scholar
Planavsky, NJ, Asael, D, Hofmann, A, Reinhard, CT, Lalonde, SV, Knudsen, A, Wang, X, Ossa Ossa, F, Pecoits, E, Smith, AJB, Beukes, NJ, Bekker, A, Johnson, TM, Konhauser, KO, Lyons, TW and Rouxel, OJ (2014) Evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis half a billion years before the great oxidation event. Nature Geoscience 7, 283–286.Google Scholar
Pogge von Strandmann, PAE, Stüeken, EE, Elliott, T, Poulton, SW, Dehler, CM, Canfield, DE and Catling, DC (2015) Selenium isotope evidence for progressive oxidation of the Neoproterozoic biosphere. Nature Communications 6, 10157.Google Scholar
Poole, AM and Gribaldo, S (2014) Eukaryotic rigins: how and when was the Mitochondrion acquired? Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6, a015990.Google Scholar
Post, D-M and Palkovacs, E-P (2009) Eco-evolutionary feedbacks in community and ecosystem ecology: interactions between the ecological theatre and the evolutionary play. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364, 1629–1640.Google Scholar
Powner, MW, Gerland, B and Sutherland, JD (2009) Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions. Nature 459, 239–242.Google Scholar
Price, DC, Chan, CX, Yoon, HS, Yang, EC, Qiu, H, Weber, APM, Schwacke, R, Gross, J, Blouin, NA, Lane, C, Reyes-Prieto, A, Durnford, DG, Neilson, JAD, Lang, BF, Burger, G, Steiner, JM, Löffelhardt, W, Meuser, JE, Posewitz, MC, Ball, S, Arias, MC, Henrissat, B, Coutinho, PM, Rensing, SA, Symeonidi, A, Doddapaneni, H, Green, BR, Rajah, VD, Boore, J and Bhattacharya, D (2012) Cyanophora paradoxa Genome Elucidates Origin of Photosynthesis in Algae and Plants. Science 335, 843–847.Google Scholar
Ranjan, S and Sasselov, DD (2016) Influence of the UV environment on the synthesis of prebiotic molecules. Astrobiology 16, 68–88.Google Scholar
Ranjan, S, Wordsworth, R and Sasselov, DD (2017) The surface UV environment on planets orbiting M-dwarfs: implications for prebiotic chemistry and the need for experimental follow-up. The Astrophysical Journal 843, 110.Google Scholar
Rapf, RJ and Vaida, V (2016) Sunlight as an energetic driver in the synthesis of molecules necessary for life. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 18, 20067–20084.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, B, Fletcher, IR, Brocks, JJ and Kilburn, MR (2008) Reassessing the first appearance of eukaryotes and cyanobacteria. Nature 455, 1101–1104.Google Scholar
Reinhard, CT, Olson, SL, Schwieterman, EW and Lyons, TW (2017a) False negatives for remote life detection on ocean-bearing planets: lessons from the early Earth. Astrobiology 17, 287–297.Google Scholar
Reinhard, CT, Planavsky, NJ, Gill, BC, Ozaki, K, Robbins, LJ, Lyons, TW, Fischer, WW, Wang, C, Cole, DB and Konhauser, KO (2017b) Evolution of the global phosphorus cycle. Nature 541, 386–389.Google Scholar
Reyes-Prieto, A, Weber, APM and Bhattacharya, D (2007) The origin and establishment of the plastid in Algae and Plants. Annual Review of Genetics 41, 147–168.Google Scholar
Richerson, PJ and Boyd, R (2008) Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago, IL, USA: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Richter, DJ and King, N (2013) The genomic and cellular foundations of animal origins. Annual Review of Genetics 47, 509–537.Google Scholar
Rimmer, PB, Xu, J, Thompson, SJ, Gillen, E, Sutherland, JD and Queloz, D (2018) The origin of RNA precursors on exoplanets. Science Advances, 4, eaar3302.Google Scholar
Rios, AC and Tor, Y (2013) On the origin of the canonical Nucleobases: an assessment of selection pressures across chemical and early biological evolution. Israel Journal of Chemistry 53, 469–483.Google Scholar
Ritson, D and Sutherland, JD (2012) Prebiotic synthesis of simple sugars by photoredox systems chemistry. Nature Chemistry 4, 895–899.Google Scholar
Ritson, DJ and Sutherland, JD (2013) Synthesis of Aldehydic Ribonucleotide and amino acid precursors by Photoredox chemistry. Angewandte Chemie (international Ed. In English) 52, 5845–5847.Google Scholar
Ritson, DJ, Battilocchio, C, Ley, SV and Sutherland, JD (2018) Mimicking the surface and prebiotic chemistry of early Earth using flow chemistry. Nature Communications 9, 1821.Google Scholar
Roberts, WA and Feeney, MC (2009) The comparative study of mental time travel. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, 271–277.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Ezpeleta, N, Brinkmann, H, Burey, SC, Roure, B, Burger, G, Löffelhardt, W, Bohnert, HJ, Philippe, H and Lang, BF (2005) Monophyly of primary photosynthetic eukaryotes: green plants, red algae, and glaucophytes. Current Biology 15, 1325–1330.Google Scholar
Roger, AJ, Muñoz-Gómez, SA and Kamikawa, R (2017) The origin and diversification of mitochondria. Current Biology 27, R1177–R1192.Google Scholar
Rokas, A (2008) The origins of multicellularity and the early history of the genetic toolkit for animal development. Annual Review of Genetics 42, 235–251.Google Scholar
Rosing, MT (1999) 13C-depleted carbon microparticles in >3700-Ma sea-floor sedimentary rocks from West Greenland. Science 283, 674–676.3700-Ma+sea-floor+sedimentary+rocks+from+West+Greenland.+Science+283,+674–676.>Google Scholar
Rosing, MT and Frei, R (2004) U-rich Archaean sea-floor sediments from Greenland – indications of >3700 Ma oxygenic photosynthesis. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 217, 237–244.3700+Ma+oxygenic+photosynthesis.+Earth+and+Planetary+Science+Letters+217,+237–244.>Google Scholar
Roth, G (2015) Convergent evolution of complex brains and high intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 370, 20150049.Google Scholar
Roth, G and Dicke, U (2005) Evolution of the brain and intelligence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, 250–257.Google Scholar
Rothschild, LJ (1999) The influence of UV radiation on protistan evolution. The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology 46, 548–555.Google Scholar
Rowlands, M (2015) Can Animals Be Moral? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ruiz-Mirazo, K, Briones, C and de la Escosura, A (2014) Prebiotic systems chemistry: new perspectives for the origins of life. Chem. Rev.Chemistry Reviews 114, 285–366.Google Scholar
Ruse, M (1996) Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rushby, AJ, Claire, MW, Osborn, H and Watson, AJ (2013) Habitable zone lifetimes of exoplanets around main sequence stars. Astrobiology 13, 833–849.Google Scholar
Russell, MJ, Barge, LM, Bhartia, R, Bocanegra, D, Bracher, PJ, Branscomb, E, Kidd, R, McGlynn, S, Meier, DH, Nitschke, W, Shibuya, T, Vance, S, White, L and Kanik, I (2014) The drive to life on wet and icy worlds. Astrobiology 14, 308–343.Google Scholar
Sagan, L (1967) On the origin of mitosing cells. Journal of Theoretical Biology 14, 225–274.Google Scholar
Sagan, C (1973) Ultraviolet selection pressure on the earliest organisms. Journal of Theoretical Biology 39, 195–200.Google Scholar
Sagan, C and Khare, BN (1971) Long-wavelength ultraviolet photoproduction of amino acids on the primitive Earth. Science 173, 417–420.Google Scholar
Sakai, S, Seki, K, Terada, N, Shinagawa, H, Tanaka, T and Ebihara, Y (2018) Effects of a weak intrinsic magnetic field on atmospheric escape from mars. Geophysical Research Letters 45, 9336–9343.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Baracaldo, P, Raven, JA, Pisani, D and Knoll, AH (2017) Early photosynthetic eukaryotes inhabited low-salinity habitats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, E7737–E7745.Google Scholar
Sanderson, MJ, Thorne, JL, Wikström, N and Bremer, K (2004) Molecular evidence on plant divergence times. American Journal of Botany 91, 1656–1665.Google Scholar
Satkoski, AM, Beukes, NJ, Li, W, Beard, BL and Johnson, CM (2015) A redox-stratified ocean 3.2 billion years ago. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 430, 43–53.Google Scholar
Schirrmeister, BE, Gugger, M and Donoghue, PCJ (2015) Cyanobacteria and the great oxidation event: evidence from genes and fossils. Palaeontology 58, 769–785.Google Scholar
Schirrmeister, BE, Sanchez-Baracaldo, P and Wacey, D (2016) Cyanobacterial evolution during the Precambrian. International Journal of Astrobiology 15, 187–204.Google Scholar
Schopf, JW (1994) Disparate rates, differing fates: tempo and mode of evolution changed from the Precambrian to the Phanerozoic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 91, 6735–6742.Google Scholar
Schopf, JW, Kitajima, K, Spicuzza, MJ, Kudryavtsev, AB and Valley, JW (2018) SIMS analyses of the oldest known assemblage of microfossils document their taxon-correlated carbon isotope compositions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115, 53–58.Google Scholar
Schwieterman, EW, Kiang, NY, Parenteau, MN, Harman, CE, DasSarma, S, Fisher, TM, Arney, GN, Hartnett, HE, Reinhard, CT, Olson, SL, Meadows, VS, Cockell, CS, Walker, SI, Grenfell, JL, Hegde, S, Rugheimer, S, Hu, R and Lyons, TW (2018) Exoplanet biosignatures: a review of remotely detectable signs of life. Astrobiology 18, 663–708.Google Scholar
Segura, A, Walkowicz, LM, Meadows, V, Kasting, J and Hawley, S (2010) The effect of a strong stellar flare on the atmospheric chemistry of an Earth-like planet orbiting an M dwarf. Astrobiology 10, 751–771.Google Scholar
Serrano-Andres, L and Merchan, M (2009) Are the five natural DNA/RNA base monomers a good choice from natural selection?: A photochemical perspective. Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology C 10, 21–32.Google Scholar
Shen, Y, Buick, R and Canfield, DE (2001) Isotopic evidence for microbial sulphate reduction in the early Archaean era. Nature 410, 77–81.Google Scholar
Shih, PM, Hemp, J, Ward, LM, Matzke, NJ and Fischer, WW (2017) Crown group Oxyphotobacteria postdate the rise of oxygen. Geobiology 15, 19–29.Google Scholar
Shklovskii, IS and Sagan, C (1966) Intelligent Life in the Universe. San Francisco, CA, USA: Holden-Day, Inc.Google Scholar
Simpson, GG (1964) The nonprevalence of humanoids. Science 143, 769–775.Google Scholar
Simpson, GG (1967) The Meaning of Evolution, vol. 23, New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sloan, D, Alves Batista, R and Loeb, A (2017) The resilience of life to astrophysical events. Science Reports 7, 5419.Google Scholar
Smith, JM and Szathmáry, E (1995) The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, JM and Szathmáry, E (1999) The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, SA, Beaulieu, JM and Donoghue, MJ (2010) An uncorrelated relaxed-clock analysis suggests an earlier origin for flowering plants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, 5897–5902.Google Scholar
Sojo, V, Herschy, B, Whicher, A, Camprubí, E and Lane, N (2016) The origin of life in alkaline hydrothermal vents. Astrobiology 16, 181–197.Google Scholar
Spang, A, Saw, JH, Jørgensen, SL, Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka, K, Martijn, J, Lind, AE, van Eijk, R, Schleper, C, Guy, L and Ettema, TJG (2015) Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Nature 521, 173–179.Google Scholar
Speijer, D, Lukeš, J and Eliáš, M (2015) Sex is a ubiquitous, ancient, and inherent attribute of eukaryotic life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 8827–8834.Google Scholar
Sperling, EA, Halverson, GP, Knoll, AH, Macdonald, FA and Johnston, DT (2013) A basin redox transect at the dawn of animal life. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 371, 143–155.Google Scholar
Sperling, EA, Wolock, CJ, Morgan, AS, Gill, BC, Kunzmann, M, Halverson, GP, MacDonald, FA, Knoll, AH and Johnston, DT (2015) Statistical analysis of iron geochemical data suggests limited late Proterozoic oxygenation. Nature 523, 451–454.Google Scholar
Spiegel, DS and Turner, EL (2012) Bayesian analysis of the astrobiological implications of life's early emergence on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109, 395–400.Google Scholar
Šponer, JE, Szabla, R, Góra, RW, Saitta, AM, Pietrucci, F, Saija, F, Di Mauro, E, Saladino, R, Ferus, M, Civiš, S and Šponer, J (2016) Prebiotic synthesis of nucleic acids and their building blocks at the atomic level – merging models and mechanisms from advanced computations and experiments. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 18, 20047–20066.Google Scholar
Steffen, W, Grinevald, J, Crutzen, P and McNeill, J (2011) The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369, 842–867.Google Scholar
Steffen, W, Broadgate, W, Deutsch, L, Gaffney, O and Ludwig, C (2015) The trajectory of the anthropocene: the great acceleration. The Anthropocene Review 2, 81–98.Google Scholar
Sterelny, K (2011) From hominins to humans: how sapiens became behaviourally modern. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366, 809–822.Google Scholar
Stern, RJ (2016) Is plate tectonics needed to evolve technological species on exoplanets? Geoscience Frontiers 7, 573–580.Google Scholar
Stewart, I and Cohen, J (1997) Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stüeken, EE (2016) Nitrogen in ancient mud: a biosignature?. Astrobiology 16, 730–735.Google Scholar
Stüeken, EE, Catling, DC and Buick, R (2012) Contributions to late Archaean sulphur cycling by life on land. Nature Geoscience 5, 722–725.Google Scholar
Stüeken, EE, Buick, R, Guy, BM and Koehler, MC (2015) Isotopic evidence for biological nitrogen fixation by molybdenum-nitrogenase from 3.2 Gyr. Nature 520, 666–669.Google Scholar
Suddendorf, T (2013) The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals. New York, NY, USA: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Sutherland, JD (2016) The origin of life–out of the blue. Angewandte Chemie (international Ed. In English) 55, 104–121.Google Scholar
Sutherland, JD (2017) Studies on the origin of life – the end of the beginning. Nature Reviews Chemistry 1, 0012.Google Scholar
Szathmáry, E (2015) Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 10104–10111.Google Scholar
Szathmáry, E and Smith, JM (1995) The major evolutionary transitions. Nature 374, 227–232.Google Scholar
Tattersall, I (2009) Human origins: out of Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, 16018–16021.Google Scholar
Teramura, AH and Sullivan, JH (1994) Effects of UV-B radiation on photosynthesis and growth of terrestrial plants. Photosynthesis Research 39, 463–473.Google Scholar
Tian, F and Ida, S (2015) Water contents of Earth-mass planets around M dwarfs. Nature Geoscience 8, 177–180.Google Scholar
Todd, ZR, Fahrenbach, AC, Magnani, CJ, Ranjan, S, Björkbom, A, Szostak, JW and Sasselov, DD (2018) Solvated-electron production using cyanocuprates is compatible with the UV-environment on a Hadean–Archaean Earth. Chemical Communications 54, 1121–1124.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M (2008) Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA, USA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M (2014) A Natural History of Human Thinking. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M (2016) A Natural History of Human Morality. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ueno, Y, Yamada, K, Yoshida, N, Maruyama, S and Isozaki, Y (2006) Evidence from fluid inclusions for microbial methanogenesis in the early Archaean era. Nature 440, 516–519.Google Scholar
Ueno, Y, Ono, S, Rumble, D and Maruyama, S (2008) Quadruple sulfur isotope analysis of ca. 3.5 Ga dresser formation: new evidence for microbial sulfate reduction in the early Archean. Geochimica Et Cosmochimica Acta 72, 5675–5691.Google Scholar
Valley, JW, Peck, WH, King, EM and Wilde, SA (2002) A cool early Earth. Geology 30, 351–354.Google Scholar
Vida, K, Kővári, Z, Pál, A, Oláh, K and Kriskovics, L (2017) Frequent flaring in the TRAPPIST-1 system–unsuited for Life?. The Astrophysical Journal 841, 124.Google Scholar
Vidotto, AA, Jardine, M, Morin, J, Donati, J -F, Lang, P and Russell, AJB (2013) Effects of M dwarf magnetic fields on potentially habitable planets. Astronomy and Astrophysics 557, A67.Google Scholar
Wacey, D, Kilburn, MR, Saunders, M, Cliff, J and Brasier, MD (2011a) Microfossils of sulphur-metabolizing cells in 3.4-billion-year-old rocks of Western Australia. Nature Geoscience 4, 698–702.Google Scholar
Wacey, D, Saunders, M, Brasier, MD and Kilburn, MR (2011b) Earliest microbially mediated pyrite oxidation in ~ 3.4 billion-year-old sediments. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 301, 393–402.Google Scholar
Wachowius, F, Attwater, J and Holliger, P (2017) Nucleic acids: function and potential for abiogenesis. Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics 50, E4.Google Scholar
Wagner, A (2011) The Origins of Evolutionary Innovations. Cambridge, MA, USA: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Waldbauer, JR, Sherman, LS, Sumner, DY and Summons, RE (2009) Late Archean molecular fossils from the Transvaal Supergroup record the antiquity of microbial diversity and aerobiosis. Precambrian Research 169, 28–47.Google Scholar
Walker, SI (2017) Origins of life: a problem for physics, a key issues review. Reports on Progress in Physics 80, 092601.Google Scholar
Waltham, D (2017) Star masses and star-planet distances for Earth-like habitability. Astrobiology 17, 61–77.Google Scholar
Ward, P and Brownlee, D (2000. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe. New York, NY, USA: Copernicus Books.Google Scholar
Waters, CN, Zalasiewicz, J, Summerhayes, C, Barnosky, AD, Poirier, C, Gałuszka, A, Cearreta, A, Edgeworth, M, Ellis, EC, Ellis, M, Jeandel, C, Leinfelder, R, McNeill, JR, Richter, Dd, Steffen, W, Syvitski, J, Vidas, D, Wagreich, M, Williams, M, Zhisheng, A, Grinevald, J, Odada, E, Oreskes, N and Wolfe, AP (2016) The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. Science, 351, aad2622.Google Scholar
Watson, AJ (2008) Implications of an Anthropic model of evolution for emergence of complex life and intelligence. Astrobiology 8, 175–185.Google Scholar
Weiss, MC, Sousa, FL, Mrnjavac, N, Neukirchen, S, Roettger, M, Nelson-Sathi, S and Martin, WF (2016) The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor. Nature Microbiology 1, 16116.Google Scholar
Wellman, CH and Strother, PK (2015) The terrestrial biota prior to the origin of land plants (embryophytes): a review of the evidence. Palaeontology 58, 601–627.Google Scholar
Wells, LE, Armstrong, JC and Gonzalez, G (2003) Reseeding of early earth by impacts of returning ejecta during the late heavy bombardment. Icarus 162, 38–46.Google Scholar
West, SA, Fisher, RM, Gardner, A, Toby Kiers, E (2015) Major evolutionary transitions in individuality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, 10112–10119.Google Scholar
Whitehead, H and Rendell, L (2015) The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins. Chicago, IL, USA: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A and Erdal, D (2012) The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 367, 2119–2129.Google Scholar
Whiten, A and van Schaik, CP (2007) The evolution of animal ‘cultures’ and social intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362, 603–620.Google Scholar
Wickramasinghe, C (2010) The astrobiological case for our cosmic ancestry. International Journal of Astrobiology 9, 119–129.Google Scholar
Wolf, ET and Toon, OB (2015) The evolution of habitable climates under the brightening Sun. Journal of Geophysical Research D 120, 5775–5794.Google Scholar
Worden, SP, Drew, J, Siemion, A, Werthimer, D, DeBoer, D, Croft, S, MacMahon, D, Lebofsky, M, Isaacson, H, Hickish, J, Price, D, Gajjar, V and Wright, JT (2017) Breakthrough listen – a new search for life in the universe. Acta Astronautica 139, 98–101.Google Scholar
Wray, GA, Levinton, JS and Shapiro, LH (1996) Molecular evidence for deep precambrian divergences among Metazoan Phyla. Science 274, 568–573.Google Scholar
Wright, JT, Mullan, B, Sigurdsson, S and Povich, MS (2014) The Ĝ infrared search for extraterrestrial civilizations with large energy supplies. I. Background and justification. The Astrophysical Journal 792, 26.Google Scholar
Wright, JT, Cartier, KMS, Zhao, M, Jontof-Hutter, D and Ford, EB (2016) The search for extraterrestrial civilizations with large energy supplies. IV. The signatures and information content of transiting megastructures. The Astrophysical Journal 816, 17.Google Scholar
Xu, J, Tsanakopoulou, M, Magnani, CJ, Szabla, R, Šponer, JE, Šponer, J, Góra, RW and Sutherland, JD (2017) A prebiotically plausible synthesis of pyrimidine β-ribonucleosides and their phosphate derivatives involving photoanomerization. Nature Chemistry 9, 303–309.Google Scholar
Xu, J, Ritson, DJ, Ranjan, S, Todd, ZR, Sasselov, DD and Sutherland, JD (2018) Photochemical reductive homologation of hydrogen cyanide using sulfite and ferrocyanide. Chemical Communications 54, 5566–5569.Google Scholar
Yoon, HS, Hackett, JD, Ciniglia, C, Pinto, G and Bhattacharya, D (2004) A molecular timeline for the origin of photosynthetic eukaryotes. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21, 809–818.Google Scholar
Yutin, N, Wolf, MY, Wolf, YI and Koonin, EV (2009) The origins of phagocytosis and eukaryogenesis. Biology Direct 4, 9.Google Scholar
Zahnle, K, Arndt, N, Cockell, C, Halliday, A, Nisbet, E, Selsis, F and Sleep, NH (2007) Emergence of a habitable planet. Space Science Reviews 129, 35–78.Google Scholar
Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka, K, Caceres, EF, Saw, JH, Bäckström, D, Juzokaite, L, Vancaester, E, Seitz, KW, Anantharaman, K, Starnawski, P, Kjeldsen, KU, Stott, MB, Nunoura, T, Banfield, JF, Schramm, A, Baker, BJ, Spang, A and Ettema, TJG (2017) Asgard archaea illuminate the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity. Nature 541, 353–358.Google Scholar