Overview
Presents a complete review of the history of life stretching 2.5 billion years
Uniquely multidisciplinary touching astronomy, geology, chemistry, biochemistry and biology
Comes with a colorful interdisciplinary fold-out graph showing the main events that have led to the emergence of life
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This review emerged from several interdisciplinary meetings and schools gathering a group of astronomers, geologists, biologists, and chemists, attempting to share their specialized knowledge around a common question: how did life emerge on Earth? Their ultimate goal was to provide some kind of answer as a prerequisite to an even more demanding question: is life universal? The resulting state-of-the-art articles were written by twenty-five scientists telling a not-so linear story, but on the contrary, highlighting problems, gaps, and controversies. Needless to say, this approach yielded no definitive answers to both questions. However, by adopting a chronological approach to the question of the emergence of life on Earth, the only place where we know for sure that life exists; it was possible to break down this question into several sub-topics that can be addressed by the different disciplines.
The main chapters of this review present the formation and evolution of the solar system (3); the building of a habitable planet (4); prebiotic chemistry, biochemistry, and the emergence of life (5); the environmental context of the early Earth (6); and the ancient fossil record and early evolution (7). The concluding chapter (9) provides the highlights of the review and presents the different points of view about the universality of life. Two pedagogical chapters are included; one on chronometers (2), another in the form of a "frieze" (8) which summarizes in graphical form the present state of knowledge about the chronology of the emergence of life on Earth, before the Cambrian explosion.
About the authors
Jacques Reisse: Professor of organic chemistry and physical chemistry- Université Libre de Bruxelles
Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium
Research activity: stereochemistry, study of intermolecular interactions in liquid phase, nuclear magnetic resonance, cosmochemistry, sonochemistry
Antonio Lazcano, Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City.
President of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life
Research activity: origin and early evolution of life
He is the author of The Origin of Life, which has become a bestseller with over 600 thousand copies sold.
He is considered the foremost promoter of evolutionary biology and the study of the origins of life in Latin America. He has been member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Molecular Evolution, Nanobiology, Revista Latinoamericana de Microbiologia, and Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: From Suns to Life: A Chronological Approach to the History of Life on Earth
Editors: Muriel Gargaud, Philippe Claeys, Purificación López-García, Hervé Martin, Thierry Montmerle, Robert Pascal, Jacques Reisse
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-45083-4
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag New York 2006
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-387-45082-7Published: 28 December 2006
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4939-3885-8Published: 23 August 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-0-387-45083-4Published: 05 July 2007
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 370
Additional Information: Reprinted from Earth, Moon, and Planets, Vol. 98/1-4, 2006
Topics: Astronomy, Observations and Techniques, Astrobiology