Earth's Early Atmosphere and Oceans, and The Origin of Life

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 1-7

3. Accretional History of Earth

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 9-17

4. Ocean Basin and Continental Evolution

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 19-24

5. Degassing Processes and Chemistry

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 25-34

6. The Underlying Chemical Nature of Life

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 35-39

7. The Miller-Urey Experiment and Prebiotic Chemistry

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 41-48

8. A Pathway to the First Organism

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 49-56

9. An Organic Carbon Rich Surface and the Source of Primitive tRNA on Earth

   • George H. Shaw

   Pages 57-62

10. Evolution of the Atmosphere During the Hadean and Archean

    • George H. Shaw

    Pages 63-67

11. The Faint Young Sun Problem

    • George H. Shaw

    Pages 69-74

12. The Origin of Oxygenic Photosynthesis and Its Impact on the Atmosphere

    • George H. Shaw

    Pages 75-93

13. What Can We Learn from Other Planets?

    • George H. Shaw

    Pages 95-105

14. Summary

    • George H. Shaw

    Pages 107-108

15. Back Matter

    Pages 109-113

    PDF

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the chemical nature of the Earth’s early surface environment and how that led to the origin of life. This includes a detailed discussion of the likely process by which life emerged using as much quantitative information as possible. The emergence of life and the prior surface conditions of the Earth have implications for the evolution of Earth’s surface environment over the following 2-2.5 billion years. The last part of the book  discusses how these changes took place and the evidence from the geologic record that supports this particular version of early and evolving conditions.

• Banded Iron Formations
• Cyanobacteria and Photosynthesis
• Early Atmosphere
• Hadean-Archean Atmosphere
• Miller-Urey Experiment
• Origin Life Earth
• Origin of Atmosphere
• Origin of Life
• Protein Synthesis
• RNA
• tRNA

• Geology Department, Union College, Schenectady, USA

  George H. Shaw

As a graduate student at the University of Washington, Dr. Shaw focused on experimental geophysics, especially high pressure measurements of elastic properties. These studies continued through an NSF post-doctoral fellowship at Edinburgh, Scotland, at the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota, and to a lesser extent after he took up a position at Union College. During his time at Minnesota Shaw was awarded an American Geophysical Union Congressional Science Fellowship. He spent the year working for a congressman from Washington State on energy and environmental issues, and particularly on the formulation and passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Dr. Shaw left Minnesota in 1988 to take up an endowed chair with the responsibility of restarting and developing a geology department at Union, a small private liberal arts college. At Minnesota he developed with a colleague a course in energy resources and policy, which we taught for about ten years and which he continued to teach at Union. About fifteen years ago Dr. Shaw initiated a course called “Great Moments in the History of Life” beginning with the origin of the universe and chemical elements and continuing through the Anthropocene. This revived an old interest in early Earth history and especially the conditions preceding and surrounding the origin of life. This book is the result of that revived interest.

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