Ancient Mud Volcanoes Perfect for Early Life, Rock Study Suggests

Ancient Mud Volcanoes Perfect for Early Life, Rock Study Suggests

Ancient deep-sea mud volcanoes may have been ideal settings for early life on Earth, researchers suggest.Life may have first developed on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago, but much remains mysterious about its beginnings. To learn more about life's origins, scientists investigated some of the oldest remnants of crust on Earth — rocks 3.7 billion to 3.8 billion years old from Isua on the southwestern coast of Greenland. The researchers found these ancient rocks once were permeated with lukewarm alkaline fluids rich in carbonates. These liquids resemble those seen today in so-called serpentine mud volcanoes located in the deep sea near the Mariana Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean formed by the summits of volcanoes; the conditions would have made the area off the coast of Greenland an especially friendly place for amino acids, helping keep them stable in the distant past. Amino acids are key ingredients of life, serving as the building blocks of proteins. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]