New research into early plate tectonics suggests the conditions for life on Earth may have existed up to a billion years earlier than generally thought.
Provocative findings reveal that oceanic plate subduction was operating from the earliest times in Earth’s history.
Modern subduction settings have all the right chemical ingredients to grow and sustain primitive life. The similarities between modern subduction plates and earlier samples suggest that conditions for life formation have existed from much earlier than originally believed.
Early Earth’s geological processes remain a fundamental question for the earth sciences, and the rareness of rocks from this time period make exploration a significant challenge.
Read more at Macquarie University