Chapter 4: A Geological and Chemical Context for the Origins of Life on Early Earth

Within the first billion years of Earth’s history, the planet transformed from a hot, barren, and inhospitable landscape to an environment conducive to the emergence and persistence of life. This chapter will review the state of knowledge concerning the early Earth’s (Hadean/Eoarchean) geochemical environment, including the origin and composition of the planet’s moon, crust, oceans, atmosphere, and organic content. I¬t will also discuss abiotic geochemical cycling of the CHONPS elements and how these species could have been converted to biologically relevant building blocks, polymers, and chemical networks. Proposed environments for abiogenesis events are also described and evaluated. An understanding of the geochemical processes under which life may have emerged can better inform our assessment of the habitability of other worlds, the potential complexity that abiotic chemistry can achieve (which has implications for putative biosignatures), and the possibility for biochemistries that are vastly different from those on Earth.