The content explores the remarkable transition in the history of life on Earth, known as the Cambrian Explosion, which occurred around 550 million years ago. Prior to this event, life on Earth had remained relatively primitive for billions of years, consisting primarily of single-celled organisms.
The Cambrian Explosion, however, saw the sudden appearance and rapid diversification of large, complex, and macroscopic lifeforms, including animals, plants, and fungi. This was a sharp contrast to the previous 4 billion years of terrestrial history, where such complex organisms were largely absent.
The author notes that the path taken by life on Earth is not necessarily common, uncommon, or rare among planets where life may arise. However, with our modern scientific knowledge, we can reconstruct some of the key developments that led to the emergence of complex life, such as the coevolution of peptides and nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, or PNA) that enabled the processes of metabolism and self-replication.
The content highlights that while asserting a "divine spark" is a common "God-of-the-gaps" argument, we also cannot claim to know exactly how life arose from non-life. The transition from simple to complex life on Earth remains a remarkable and intriguing chapter in the planet's evolutionary history.
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by Ethan Siegel ב- medium.com 04-09-2024
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/what-was-it-like-when-life-on-earth-became-complex-60fefa4eeaa7שאלות מעמיקות