What was Earth like during the Hadean eon?

The Hadean Eon began when the planet Earth first began to form, about 4.5 billion
years ago. At first there was just a cloud of gas and dust, and then the Sun formed, and
gradually the planets formed.Sep 6, 2018

The Hadean  is the first geologic eon of Earth and lies before the Archean. It began with
the formation of the Earth about 4600 million years ago and ended as defined by the
ICS 4,000 million years ago.

The name “Hadean” comes from Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld due to
the “hellish” conditions on Earth at the time: the planet had just formed and was still
very hot due to high volcanism, a partially molten surface and frequent collisions with
other Solar System bodies.
The geologist Preston Cloud coined the term in 1972, originally to label the period
before the earliest-known rocks on Earth. W. Brian Harland later coined an almost
synonymous term: the “Priscoan period”. Other, older texts simply refer to the eon as
the Pre-Archean.

Subdivisions
Since few geological traces of this eon remain on Earth there is no official subdivision.
However, the Lunar geologic timescale embraces several major divisions relating to the
Hadean and so these are sometimes used in a somewhat informal sense to refer to the
same periods of time on Earth.

The Lunar divisions are:

     Pre-Nectarian, from the formation of the Moon’s crust up to about 3,920
million years ago
     Nectarian ranging up to about 3,850 million years ago, in a time when the
Late Heavy Bombardment, according to that theory, was in a stage of decline.

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There is a recently proposed alternative scale that includes the addition of the Chaotian
and Prenephelean Eons preceding the Hadean, and divides the Hadean into three eras
with two periods each. The Paleohadean era consists of the Hephaestean (4.5-4.4 Ga)
and the Jacobian periods (4.4-4.3 Ga). The Mesohadean is divided into the Canadian
(4.3-4.2 Ga) and the Procrustean periods (4.2-4.1 Ga). The Neohadean is divided into
the Acastan (4.1-4.0 Ga) and the Promethean periods (4.0-3.9 Ga).

Hadean rocks
A sizeable quantity of water would have been in the material that formed the Earth.
Water molecules would have escaped Earth’s gravity more easily when it was less
massive during its formation. Hydrogen and helium are expected to continually escape
(even to the present day) due to atmospheric escape.
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Part of the ancient planet is theorized to have been disrupted by the impact that
created the Moon, which should have caused melting of one or two large areas. Present
composition does not match complete melting and it is hard to completely melt and mix
huge rock masses. However, a fair fraction of material should have been vaporized by
this impact, creating a rock vapor atmosphere around the young planet. The rock vapor
would have condensed within two thousand years, leaving behind hot volatiles which
probably resulted in a heavy CO2 atmosphere with hydrogen and water vapor. Liquid
water oceans existed despite the surface temperature of 230 °C (446 °F) because of
the atmospheric pressure of the heavy CO2 atmosphere. As cooling continued,
subduction and dissolving in ocean water removed most CO 2 from the atmosphere but
levels oscillated wildly as new surface and mantle cycles appeared.

Study of zircons has found that liquid water must have existed as long ago as 4,400
million years ago, very soon after the formation of the Earth. This requires the presence
of an atmosphere. The Cool Early Earth theory covers a range from about 4,400 to
4,000 million years ago.

A September 2008 study of zircons found that Australian Hadean rock holds minerals
that point to the existence of plate tectonics as early as 4,000 million years ago. If this
is true, the time when Earth finished its transition from having a hot, molten surface
and atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, to being very much like it is today, can be
roughly dated to about 4.0 billion years ago. The action of plate tectonics and the
oceans traps vast amounts of carbon dioxide, thereby eliminating the greenhouse effect
and leading to a much cooler surface temperature and the formation of solid rock, and
possibly even life.

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HADEAN   
 THE HADEAN EON
4.5 to 3.8 Billion Years Ago
The Age of Planetary Formation
The young, molten Earth endures massive meteor impacts

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty . . . Genesis 1:1-2

Timeline Archean

                       --------------|
Paleo-Geography
 Formation of the Earth
 A huge planetoid crushes into Earth & splits off Moon
 Massive meteor bombardments  pound Earth and Moon
 Interior of the molten Earth separates into layers
 Dense, very hot atmosphere of hydrogen, CO², steam,
ammonia & methane - no oxygen
 Boiling steam begins to condense into oceans
 Earliest known rocks on Earth date from the Hadean

Life
 None
 Organic chemical components of the building blocks
of life (amino acids, RNA and DNA) first appear

  The Earth and Moon in the Hadean Eon

(Image: Mark Garlick - Space Art)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

SOURCES:
University of California Museum of Paleontology - Tour of Geologic Time 
Wikipedia - Geologic Time Scale
Palaeos - Geological Time
International Commission on Stratigraphy

By Corey Zak - CORZAK INTERACTIVE

Why is it called the Hadean Eon?

Scientists named the Hadean Eon after the Greek god Hades, who ruled the underworld.
That’s because during most of the Hadean period the surface of the Earth must have been
like the Christian image of Hell.

In the Hadean Eon, Earth was covered with active volcanoes like this one.

When was the Hadean Eon?

The Hadean Eon began when the planet Earthfirst began to form, about 4.5 billion years
ago. At first there was just a cloud of gas and dust, and then the Sun formed, and gradually
the planets formed.

What happened during the Hadean Eon?

Around 45 million years after the planets first began to form, the Moon formed. Probably a
large planetoid, about the size of Mars, crashed into the Earth. Little bits of hot rock
splashed off during the crash and orbited around the Earth. Eventually these bits joined
together, cooled off, and became the Moon.

The Moon orbiting Earth (taken from space) – NASA

On Earth, and probably on other planets too, the heavier ironatoms sank down and became
the core of the Earth, and lighter atoms like silica and hydrogen rose to the surface. Most of
the gases – hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and nitrogen – floated away
into space. Water, brought to Earth by cometsthat crashed into the Earth, boiled
into steam because the Earth was still very hot. The water formed a steam atmosphere
around the Earth.

Hadean Eon: The first oceans formed

The oldest rocks formed

Around 4.4 billion years ago, most of the planetoids had gotten smashed up into dust or had
become part of a bigger planet. There weren’t any more of them to smash into the Earth.

Now that planetoids weren’t always smashing into them, the Earth and the Moon formed
rocky crusts of silica all over them. The oldest Earth rocks and Moon rocks we know about
both date to this time. These are igneous rocks like granite and quartz.

Why is granite so hard?

What’s so important about quartz?
What is an igneous rock?

The oceans formed

As the Earth cooled down, about 4.3 billion years ago, the steam in the atmosphere also
cooled down and fell as rain on the Earth.

Why does it rain?

That made the oceans. By 4.2 billion years ago, Earth had land and oceans just as it does
today. Plate tectonics may have already been moving the land and oceans around.

What is plate tectonics?

The first steps towards living creatures

The oceans in some parts of the Earth may even have been frozen into ice, as the North
and South Poles are today. Inside the oceans, amino acids from space began to join
together into the first proteins – not yet life, but a step along the way. Probably the
earliest RNA molecules also formed at this time.

What is RNA?
What are proteins?

By now almost a billion years had passed. By about 3.8 billion years ago,
the continents were beginning to form on Earth. This marks the change to the next eon,
the Archaean.

hy do we have geological eras?

Geologists divide the history of the Earth into eons and eras. That’s so they don’t have to
always be saying “400 million years ago” or whatever. Not everyone uses the same names
for the eras, so you may find different ones in different articles. But the same things
happened, whatever we call them and however we divide them up.

What is time?
More about geology

The Earth forms

The earliest period was the Hadean Eon. The Hadean Era started when the Earth formed
about 4.5 billion years ago. It lasted until about 3.8 billion years ago. The Hadean Eon is
when the oldest igneous rocks on Earth formed. Probably nothing was alive on Earth during
the Hadean Eon.

Hadean Eon
Archaean Eon

When the continents began to form, we call that the Archaean Eon. During the Archaean
Eon, the earliest living cells probably formed in the oceans.

Evolution of Earth in 60 seconds

Worms and jellyfish

During the Proterozoic Era, between 2.5 billion years ago and 542 million years
ago, eukaryotic cells developed.
The Proterozoic Era

Near the end of the Proterozoic Era, about 600 million years ago, creatures with more than
one cell like hydras, jellyfish, and sponges lived in the oceans. Not long after that, beginning
about 550 million years ago, these evolved into flatworms, then roundworms, and finally
into segmented worms.

Insects, fish, frogs, ferns

During the Cambrian period, between 542 and 488 million years ago, moss began to grow
on land at the edges of the water. Early arthropods like spiders and millipedes became the
first land animals. Thanks to meiosis, or sexual reproduction, many new kinds of plants and
animals that lived in the oceans appeared at this time, like octopus and eels.

Geological eras: Fossil spider from the Cretaceous era

The Precambrian is the name given for the first super eon of Earth’s history. This
division of time — about seven-eighths of Earth's history — lasted from the first
formation of the planet (about 4.6 billion years ago) to the geologically sudden
diversification of multicellular life known as the Cambrian Explosion (usually dated at
about 542 million years ago).

The Precambrian is usually considered to have three eons: the Hadean, the Archean
and the Proterozoic. Some scientists recognize a fourth eon, which they call the
Chaotian, which predates the others and is the time of the first formation of our solar
system.
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Hadean Eon
The Hadean Eon occurred 4.6 billion to 4 billion years ago. It is named for the
mythological Hades, an allusion to the probable conditions of this time. During Hadean
time, the solar system was forming within a cloud of dust and gas known as the solar
nebula, which eventually spawned asteroids, comets, moons and planets.
Astrogeophysicists theorize that about 4.52 billion years ago the proto-Earth collided
with a Mars-size planetoid named Theia. The collision added about 10 percent to
Earth’s mass. Debris from this collision coalesced to form Earth’s moon. It is
hypothesized that Theia’s iron core sank to the center of the still molten Earth, giving
this planet’s core enough density to begin to cool. Lighter elements “floating” on the
surface began to form a scum of crustal materials. This early crust was frequently
turned and subsumed by the molten interior. There are few terrestrial rocks from
Hadean time, just a few mineral fragments found in sandstone substrates in Australia.
However, study of lunar formations shows that the Earth/moon system continued to be
bombarded by frequent asteroid collisions throughout the Hadean. 

Archean Eon
Between 4 billion and 2.5 billion years ago, the continental shield rock began to form.
Approximately 70 percent of continental landmass was formed during this time. Small
“island” land masses floated in the molten “seas.”  Earth had acquired enough mass to
hold a reducing atmosphere composed of methane, ammonia and other gases. Water
from comets and hydrated minerals condensed in the atmosphere and fell as torrential
rain, cooling the planet and filling the first oceans with liquid water.

Exactly when or how it happened is unknown, but microfossils of this time indicate that
life began in the oceans about 3.5 billion to 2.8 billion years ago. It is probable that
these microscopic prokaryotes began as chemoautotrophs, anaerobic bacteria able to
obtain carbon from carbon dioxide (CO2). By the end of the Archean, the ocean floor
was covered in a living mat of bacterial life.

Proterozoic Eon
The Proterozoic Eon is also called the Cryptozoic ("age of hidden life"). About 2.5 billion
years ago, enough shield rock had formed to start recognizable geologic processes
such as plate tectonics. Geology was about to be joined by biology to continue Earth’s
progress from a molten hell to a living planet. It is generally accepted that different types
of prokaryotic organisms formed symbiotic relationships. Some types, more efficient at
converting energy, were engulfed by larger protective “bubbles” able to shield them from
the harsh environment. As time went on the symbiotic relationship became permanent
and the “energy conversion” components became the chloroplasts and mitochondria of
the first eukaryotic cells. Microfossils of these early cells are called Acritarchs.

About 1.2 billion years ago, plate tectonics forced the available shield rock to collide,
forming Rodinia (a Russian term meaning “mother land”), Earth’s first super continent.
Rodinia’s coastal waters were filled with rounded colonies of photosynthetic algae
known as stromatolites.
After a brief ice age in the mid-Proterozoic, organisms underwent rapid differentiation.
The Ediacaran Period , the last of the Proterozoic Era, saw the first multicellular
organisms. Autotrophs and soft-bodied heterotrophs filled the continental shelf regions
around Rodinia. Many were Cnidarians similar to small jellyfish with radial body
symmetry and specialized cells to sting prey and convey it into the body cavity. Fossils
show that significantly different populations inhabited different localities. Some benthic
(sea bottom-dwelling) organisms used a muscular “foot” to cling to the ocean bottom
similar to the modern sea pen. Kimbrella fossils show a clear anterior/posterior axis,
bilateral body symmetry and some indications they could crawl. Some scientists classify
them as being related to the mollusks.
The boundary between the Ediacaran Period of the Proterozoic Era and the Cambrian
Period of the Paleozoic Era is not as clear-cut as it was once thought to be. It used to be
thought that increasing oxygenation caused a mass extinction of Ediacaran forms and a
geologically sudden proliferation of new complex forms. Now it is understood that there
were many complex multicellular animals capable of living in the higher oxygen of the
Ediacaran environment. However they were nearly all soft-bodied forms, which left few
fossil traces behind for us to find. The relative abundance of Cambrian fossils
represents an increase in animals with calcified body parts, which were easily fossilized,
not a mass extinction of Ediacaran life as was once thought.

The beginning of the Archaean Eon

After the end of the Hadean Eon is the beginning of the Archaean Eon. That’s about 3.8
billion years ago. Earth was still about three times as hot as it is today. But it was no longer
hot enough to boil water.

Go back to the Hadean Eon

All our geology articles

Most of the Earth was covered with oceans. Earth’s atmosphere was mainly carbon

dioxidewith very little oxygen in it. Just a little bit of land was forming as volcanoes began to
poke out of the water.

Read more about volcanoes

Granite rock
Most of the rocks were igneous or metamorphic like graniteor quartz. But the
earliest sedimentary rocks like sandstone also formed during this time. These rocks were
mainly in the oceans.

When did life begin on Earth?

About this time – around the beginning of the Archaean Eon, about 3.8 billion years ago –
the earliest living cellsformed on Earth. These cells all lived in the oceans, which were
probably much warmer and more acidic than they are now.

Read more about how life got started

Chloroplasts (seen through a microscope) can photosynthesize food from sunlight, water,
and carbon monoxide.

By about 3.5 billion years ago, these early cells had evolved into simple prokaryote cells.
For the rest of the Archaean Eon, there were only prokaryote cells on Earth (and the vast
majority of cells on Earth are still prokaryotes).
Read more about prokaryote cells

Archaean Eon: Iron that has turned red because of oxygen in the water

Photosynthesis gets started

By three billion years ago, some of these prokaryote cells evolved to be able to make their
own food out of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. We call this process photosynthesis.

Read more about photosynthesis

Cells that got their energy by photosynthesis excreted (pooped out) oxygen, and once a lot
of cells were photosynthesizing there started to be more and more oxygen on Earth.

But during the Archaean Eon almost none of

that oxygen was in the atmosphere – instead, iron and sulfur rocks mixed with early oxygen
atoms to make rusty red rocks and limestone.

Millions of one-celled creatures with silicon and oxygenin their cell walls – prokaryotes –

died and sank to the bottom of the ocean, where the silicon and oxygen was squashed into
chert and flint.

Read more about flint

Asteroids hit the Earth

There were probably many large asteroids that hit the Earth during the Archaean Eon.
These asteroids would have killed many small living creatures – prokaryote cells – and may
have encouraged others to evolve.

The end of the Archaean Eon

About 2.5 (two and a half) billion years ago, the Archaean Eon ended and the Proterozoic
Eonbegan.

Archaean Eon: A volcano erupts out of the water

Two and a half billion years ago, the Archaean Eon ended and the Proterozoic Eon began.
Trillions of prokaryote cells lived in Earth’s oceans. Some of these cells
could photosynthesize their energy from sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide.

These photosynthesizing cells pooped out a lot of oxygen. By about 2.3 billion years ago,
the ironand sulphur rocks of Earth had soaked up all the oxygen they could use. More and
more left-over oxygen was floating around in Earth’s atmosphere.

By two billion years ago, a few cells had evolved that could use all this oxygen in the
atmosphere to get energy. Eukaryote cells didn’t evolve to be able to use oxygen
or photosynthesizethemselves. Instead, eukaryotes captured the smaller cells that could
photosynthesize and worked with them. Gradually these smaller cells lost the ability to live
independently and turned into mitochondria and chloroplasts. The eukaryotes got more and
more complicated. They also evolved to be able to reproduce through meiosis, with both a
father and a mother, instead of only by cell division (mitosis).

A billion years later, one billion years ago, plate tectonics brought the continents together
into one big supercontinent we call Rodinia. Then Rodinia broke apart, so that the pieces
soon began to float away from each other again. During this time, also, there were several
Ice Ages, when all of Earth was much cooler than it is today. A lot of the water in the oceans
turned to ice. Possibly for a while about 700 million years ago the whole Earth may have
been one big ball of ice. But then it soon melted again.

Live sponges

Meiosis, or sexual reproduction, gave cells a lot more diversity in their DNA. The diversity
let evolution happen more quickly. So only a little more than a billion years after meiosis
began, the first creatures developed that had more than one cell – they were something
like hydras. That was about 600 million years ago.

Around the same time, the first divisions between animals, plants,

and funguses (like mushrooms) happened. Soon there were sponges and jellyfish
and flatworms in addition to hydras, and the first multi-cellular plants like seaweed, as well.

The end of the Proterozoic, about 542 million years ago, is roughly the time when the
first segmented worms and arthropods – insects like beetles – appear on Earth. The next
period is the Cambrian Era.

The Archean eon, which preceded the Proterozoic eon, spanned about 1.5 billion
years and is subdivided into four eras: the Neoarchean (2.8 to 2.5 billion years ago),
Mesoarchean (3.2 to 2.8 billion years ago), Paleoarchean (3.6 to 3.2 billion years ago),
and Eoarchean (4 to 3.6 billion years ago).*

If you were able to travel back to visit the Earth during the Archean, you would likely
not recognize it as the same planet we inhabit today. The atmosphere was very
different from what we breathe today; at that time, it was likely a reducing atmosphere
 of methane, ammonia, and other gases which would be toxic to most life on our planet
today. Also during this time, the Earth's crust cooled enough that rocks and
continental plates began to form.

It was early in the Archean that life first appeared on Earth. Our oldest fossils date to
roughly 3.5 billion years ago, and consist of bacteria microfossils. In fact, all life
during the more than one billion years of the Archean was bacterial. The Archean
coast was home to mounded colonies of photosynthetic bacteria called stromatolites.
Stromatolites have been found as fossils in early Archean rocks of South Africa and
western Australia. Stromatolites increased in abundance throughout the Archean, but
began to decline during the Proterozoic. They are not common today, but they are
doing well in Shark Bay, Australia (see photo below).

Former UCMP grad students Allen Collins (left) and Chris Meyer stand among living
stromatolites in Shark Bay, at the westernmost point of Australia.

The Hadean

Hadean time (4.6 to 4 billion years ago)* is not a geological period as such. No rocks
on the Earth are this old, except for meteorites. During Hadean time, the Solar System
was forming, probably within a large cloud of gas and dust around the sun, called an
accretion disc. The relative abundance of heavier elements in the Solar System
suggests that this gas and dust was derived from a supernova, or supernovas — the
explosion of an old, massive star. Heavier elements are generated within stars by
nuclear fusion of hydrogen, and are otherwise uncommon. We can see similar
 processes taking place today in so-called diffuse nebulae in this and other galaxies,
such as the Nebula M16, below left.

Left: A Hubble Space Telescope image of a star-forming region of Nebula M16 (Eagle
Nebula). Right: Asteroid Ida and its moon as imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993.
The spacecraft was about 10,500 kilometers (6,500 miles) from the asteroid.

The sun formed within such a cloud of gas and dust, shrinking in on itself by
gravitational compaction until it began to undergo nuclear fusion and give off light
and heat. Surrounding particles began to coalesce by gravity into larger lumps, or
planetesimals, which continued to aggregate into planets. "Left-over" material formed
asteroids and comets, like asteroid Ida, above right.

Because collisions between large planetesimals release a lot of heat, the Earth and
other planets would have been molten at the beginning of their histories. Solidification
of the molten material into rock happened as the Earth cooled. The oldest meteorites
and lunar rocks are about 4.5 billion years old, but the oldest Earth rocks currently
known are 3.8 billion years. Sometime during the first 800 million or so years of its
history, the surface of the Earth changed from liquid to solid. Once solid rock formed
on the Earth, its geological history began. This most likely happened prior to 3.8
billion years, but hard evidence for this is lacking. Erosion and plate tectonics has
probably destroyed all of the solid rocks that were older than 3.8 billion years. The
advent of a rock record roughly marks the beginning of the Archean eon.

Resources and references

  Bengtson, S. (ed.) 1994. Early Life on Earth. Nobel Symposium 84. Columbia
University Press, New York.
 Schopf, J.W. (ed.) 1983. Earth's Earliest Biosphere: Its Origin and Evolution.
Princeton University Press, Princeton. 543 pp.
 Read more about Shark Bay and its stromatolites or stromatolites in general on
Wikipedia.
 Learn more about the Archean and Hadean on Wikipedia.
 Find out more about the Precambrian paleontology and geology of North
America at the Paleontology Portal.

Precambrian, period of time extending from about 4.6 billion years ago (the point at
which Earth began to form) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 541 million
years ago. The Precambrian encompasses the Archean and Proterozoic eons, which
are formal geologic intervals that lasted from 4 billion to about 541 million years ago,
and the Hadean Eon, which is an informal interval spanning from 4.6 billion to 4
billion years ago. The Precambrian represents more than 80 percent of the total
geologic record.
All life-forms were long assumed to have originated in the Cambrian, and therefore all
earlier rocks were grouped together into the Precambrian. Although many varied
forms of life evolved and were preserved extensively as fossil remains in
Cambrian sedimentary rocks, detailed mapping and examination of Precambrian rocks
on most continents have revealed that additional primitive life-forms existed
approximately 3.5 billion years ago. Nevertheless, the original terminology to
distinguish Precambrian rocks from all younger rocks is still used for
subdividing geologic time.


 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Source: International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS)
Proterozoic EonThe Proterozoic Eon and its subdivisions.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Source: International Commission
on Stratigraphy (ICS)

The earliest evidence for the advent of life includes Precambrian microfossils that
resemble algae, cysts of flagellates, tubes interpreted to be the remains of filamentous
organisms, and stromatolites(sheetlike mats precipitated by communities of
microorganisms). In the late Precambrian, the first multicellular organisms evolved,
and sexual division developed. By the end of the Precambrian, conditions were set for
the explosion of life that took place at the start of the Cambrian, the first period of
the Phanerozoic Eon (541 million years ago to the present).
The Precambrian Environment
Several rock types yield information on the range of environmentsthat may
have existed during Precambrian time. Evolution of the atmosphere is
recorded by banded-iron formations (BIFs), paleosols (buried soil horizons),
and red beds, whereas tillites (sedimentary rocksformed by the lithification of
glacial till) provide clues to the climatic patterns that occurred during
Precambrian glaciations.
The earth as we know it today is shaped by what happened during the Precambrian period, which
covers four billion years! This lesson covers the events that shaped this important period.

Eons of the Precambrian

The primary way we get an understanding of Earth's history is by studying the rocks and fossils
leftover from various time periods. The difficulty in studying the Precambrian period is that many of
the rocks from that time have eroded away or metamorphosed so they are not recognizable in their
original form.
The beginning of the Precambrian period starts with the formation of Earth about 4.5 billion years
ago and ends at the first sign of complex life about 540 million years ago. Though the Precambrian
Period is often referred to as a period, it's actually the only supereon, which means that it spans
multiple eons. The Precambrian has been divided into three eons: the Hadean, the Archean, and the
Proterozoic.

Hadean
The Hadean eon took place 4,500 - 4,000 million years ago. As our planet formed, gravity pulled
gas and dust from the solar system into what we know now as Earth. Friction then heated the
material that would eventually become Earth into a sphere of hot molten lava. At this time, the earth
was a very harsh environment; there was no solid crust, just molten lava covering the surface. All the
water that we see in the oceans, lakes, rivers, and glaciers were evaporated in the atmosphere. Just
imagine the humidity!
If this wasn't enough, asteroid impacts were a common occurrence on the young planet. Some
scientists believe the moon was formed by one such collision. It is theorized that a Mars-sized object
crashed into Earth early in the Hadean eon. The theory states that the impact caused a large
amount of debris to be ejected from Earth, which later combined to form the moon.

Archean
The Archean eon took place 4,000 - 2,500 million years ago. Over time, as the earth cooled, the
outer edge of the planet solidified from molten lava to a solid crust. Although it wasn't perfectly solid,
large volcanoes were erupting all over Earth and forming new land. With the crust shifting and
cracking below, collisions formed the beginnings of early continents.
As the earth cooled even more, the water in the atmosphere began to rain out. All the water that was
evaporated in the atmosphere began to pour down onto the newly formed solid ground. By this eon
in the Precambrian, most of the water had rained down from the atmosphere and covered Earth with
a global ocean.
It is believed that the first signs of life formed during the Archean eon in these oceans. Carbon dating
from fossils found in Western Australia show evidence that a small single-cell organism named
cyanobacteria, or more commonly known as blue-green algae, was present in the ocean around
3,000 million years ago.

Proterozoic
The Proterozoic eon took place 2,500 - 541 million years ago. The start of the Proterozoic eon is
based off the earliest carbon dating of the continental rock that has not been deformed. By the
Proterozoic eon, the earth had cooled even more, and the number of volcanoes had decreased from
what was seen in the Archean eon.
Plate tectonics were still very active, and by this eon, there were two supercontinents on either side
of the planet. However, these continents look nothing like the ones we recognize today. Not only
were they shaped differently, but they were completely void of life.

The Precambrian Era

The Precambrian Era, also known as the Precambrian Supereon, is a period of time in Earth’s
history that covered approximately 4 billion years, which is about 90% of the entire history
of the Earth. It starts about 4.56 billion years ago when the Earth was formed and ends
about 541 million years ago when simple organisms began evolving into more complex
multi-celled organisms.

This period of time is not only the longest in Earth’s history, however, it is also one of the
most obscure. That’s because scientists have a hard time getting information from the
Precambrian rocks because over the years they’ve become heavily metamorphosized. This
makes it hard to determine how events unfolded during this time. Scientists have broken
down this era into 3 distinct eons: the Hadean, the Archean, and the Proterozoic.

The Hadean Eon begins when the Earth formed from swirling dust and gas coalescing into a
sphere about 4.56 billion years ago and continues all throughout the geological development
of the planet. During this time, Earth had impact craters all over it from asteroids and other
celestial bodies crashing into it; had oceans that weren’t filled with water but were instead
filled with boiling, liquid rock and had air that was filled with sulfur, carbon dioxide, and dust.
This is the time when a large celestial body crashed into the Earth and caused a part of it to
be kicked into Earth’s orbit and therefore becoming the moon.

The Archean Eon began approximately 560 million years after the formation of the Earth.
During this time, the planet isn’t a living hell like it was during the Hadean Eon. For the most
part, the Earth has cooled down and the water vapor that was locked in the atmosphere had
begun to cool and condense into massive oceans. A large portion of the carbon dioxide that
was a main component of the atmosphere during the last eon, was chemically alter and
became limestone for the ocean floor. It was also the time when simple bacteria began to
make their first appearance of the Precambrian Era. Scientists believe these original life
forms were blue-green algae that swam in the prehistoric oceans.

The Proterozoic Eon began about 2 billion years ago, which is approximately 2 billion years
after the formation of the Earth. During this time, Earth was moving toward becoming a
planet with a more oxygenated atmosphere. It was also the time when several glaciations
occurred—which many scientists believe led to Snowball Earth, although at this point it’s still
a hypothesis. Single celled organisms named eukaryotes also began to gain prominence
during this period and this was also the time when multi-celled life really began to evolve;
both probably as a result of the free oxygen that was now available in the atmosphere.

The Precambrian Era is also known for the formation, and the occasional break-up, of several
land masses. This included the supercontinent known as Vaalbara. This supercontinent was
formed approximately 3.6 billion years ago. However, it ended up breaking up about 800
million years after its formation. Other super-continents that were created and which
eventually broke up during this period of time was Kenorland, the supercontinent Nuna and
the one called Rodinia.

It was a period of extraordinary geological change as well as extraordinary biological change.

Changes which radically altered the planet and would eventually set the stage for the
Paleozoic Era – a period of time that is known for the unprecedented evolution of life and
eventually, the rise of human beings.

The Precambrian

Lesson Objectives
 Describe how the early continents came together.
 Understand what was needed for the first life and the various ways it may have come
about.
 Discuss the early atmosphere and how and why free oxygen finally increased.
 Know the features and advantages of multicellular organisms.

Vocabulary
  amino acid
 craton
 cyanobacteria
 eukaryote
 extinct
 greenstone
 LUCA (last universal common ancestor)
 metabolism
 microbe
 microcontinent
 nucleic acid
 paleogeography
 photosynthesis
 platform
 prokaryote
 RNA world hypothesis
 shield
 stromatolites
 supercontinent
 symbiotic

Introduction
The longest span of time is the Precambrian Era, which includes the Proterozoic,
Archean, and Pre-Archean (also called the Hadean). The Precambrian began when the
Earth formed and ended at the beginning of the Cambrian period, 570 million years ago.
The events recounted in the previous section were all part of the earliest Earth history,
the Hadean. But there was still much more to come in the Precambrian Era. The
geological principles explained in the earlier chapters of this book apply to
understanding the geological history of these old times (Figure below).
The Geologic Time Scale.

Early Continents

The first crust was made of basaltic rock, like the current ocean crust. Partial melting of
the lower portion of the basaltic crust began more than 4 billion years ago. This created
the silica-rich crust that became the felsic continents.

Cratons and Shields

The earliest felsic continental crust is now found in the ancient cores of continents,
called the cratons. Rapid plate motions meant that cratons experienced many
continental collisions. Little is known about the paleogeography, or the ancient
geography, of the early planet, although smaller continents could have come together
and broken up.
Places the craton crops out at the surface is known as a shield. Cratons date from the
Precambrian and are called Precambrian shields. Many Precambrian shields are about
570 million years old (Figure below).

The Canadian Shield is the ancient flat part of Canada that lies around Hudson Bay, the
northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and much of Greenland.

Geologists can learn many things about the Pre-Archean by studying the rocks of the
cratons.

 Cratons also contain felsic igneous rocks, which are remnants of the first continents.
 Cratonic rocks contain rounded sedimentary grains. Of what importance is this fact?
Rounded grains indicate that the minerals eroded from an earlier rock type and that rivers
or seas also existed.
 One common rock type in the cratons is greenstone, a metamorphosed volcanic rock
(Figure below). Since greenstones are found today in oceanic trenches, what does the
presence of greenstones mean? These ancient greenstones indicate the presence of
subduction zones.
Ice age glaciers scraped the Canadian Shield down to the 4.28 billion year old
greenstone in Northwestern Quebec.

During the Pre-Archean and Archean, Earth’s interior was warmer than today. Mantle
convection was faster and plate tectonics processes were more vigorous. Since
subduction zones were more common, the early crustal plates were relatively small.

In most places the cratons were covered by younger rocks, which together are called
a platform. Sometimes the younger rocks eroded away to expose the Precambrian
craton (Figure below).
The Precambrian craton is exposed in the Grand Canyon where the Colorado River has
cut through the younger sedimentary rocks.

Since the time that it was completely molten, Earth has been cooling. Still, about half
the internal heat that was generated when Earth formed remains in the planet and is the
source of the heat in the core and mantle today.

Precambrian Plate Tectonics

By the end of the Archean, about 2.5 billion years ago, plate tectonics processes were
completely recognizable. Small Proterozoic continents known
as microcontinents collided to create supercontinents, which resulted in the uplift of
massive mountain ranges.

The history of the North American craton is an example of what generally happened to
the cratons during the Precambrian. As the craton drifted, it collided with
microcontinents and oceanic island arcs, which were added to the continents.
Convergence was especially active between 1.5 and 1.0 billion years ago. These lands
came together to create the continent of Laurentia.

About 1.1 billion years ago, Laurentia became part of the supercontinent Rodinia
(Figure below). Rodinia probably contained all of the landmass at the time, which was
about 75% of the continental landmass present today.
Rodinia as it came together about 1.1 billion years ago.

Rodinia broke up about 750 million years ago. The geological evidence for this breakup
includes large lava flows that are found where continental rifting took place. Seafloor
spreading eventually started and created the oceans between the continents.

The breakup of Rodinia may have triggered Snowball Earth around 700 million years
ago. Snowball Earth is the hypothesis that much of the planet was covered by ice at the
end of the Precambrian. When the ice melted and the planet became habitable, life
evolved rapidly. This explains the rapid evolution of life in the Ediacaran and Cambrian
periods.

This video explores the origin of continents and early plate tectonics on the young
Earth (1c): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDqskltCixA (5:17).
The presence of water on ancient Earth is revealed in a zircon
crystal (1c): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V21hFmZP5zM (3:13).

The Origin of Life

No one knows how or when life first began on the turbulent early Earth. There is little
hard evidence from so long ago. Scientists think that it is extremely likely that life began
and was wiped out more than once; for example, by the impact that created the Moon.

To look for information regarding the origin of life, scientists:

 perform experiments to recreate the environmental conditions found at that time.

 study the living creatures that make their homes in the types of extreme environments
that were typical in Earth’s early days.
 seek traces of life left by ancient microorganisms, also called microbes, such as
microscopic features or isotopic ratios indicative of life. Any traces of life from this time
period are so ancient, it is difficult to be certain whether they originated by biological or
non-biological means.

What does a molecule need to be and do to be considered alive? The molecule must:

 be organic. The organic molecules needed are amino acids, the building blocks of life.
 have a metabolism.
 be capable of replication (be able to reproduce).

Amino Acids

Amino acids are the building blocks of life because they create proteins. To form
proteins, the amino acids are linked together by covalent bonds to form polymers called
polypeptide chains (Figure below).

Amino acids form polypeptide chains.

These chains are arranged in a specific order to form each different type of protein.
Proteins are the most abundant class of biological molecules. An important question
facing scientists is where the first amino acids came from: Did they originate on Earth or
did they fly in from outer space? No matter where they originated, the creation of amino
acids requires the right starting materials and some energy.

To see if amino acids could originate in the environment thought to be present in the
first years of Earth’s existence, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey performed a famous
experiment in 1953 (Figure below). To simulate the early atmosphere they placed
hydrogen, methane and ammonia in a flask of heated water that created water vapor,
which they called the primordial soup. Sparks simulated lightning, which the scientists
thought could have been the energy that drove the chemical reactions that created the
amino acids. It worked! The gases combined to form water-soluble organic compounds
including amino acids.

The Miller-Urey experiment was simple and elegant.

A dramatic reenactment of this experiment is performed on this video from the 1980 TV
show Cosmos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yet1xkAv_HY. At the end you can
learn about the possible role of RNA.

Amino acids might also have originated at hydrothermal vents or deep in the crust
where Earth’s internal heat is the energy source. Meteorites containing amino acids
currently enter the Earth system and so meteorites could have delivered amino acids to
the planet from elsewhere in the solar system (where they would have formed by
processes similar to those outlined here).

Metabolism

Organic molecules must also carry out the chemical work of cells; that is,
their metabolism. Chemical reactions in a living organism allow that organism to live in
its environment, grow, and reproduce. Metabolism gets energy from other sources and
creates structures needed in cells. The chemical reactions occur in a sequence of steps
known as metabolic pathways. The metabolic pathways are very similar between
unicellular bacteria that have been around for billions of years and the most complex life
forms on Earth today. This means that they evolved very early in Earth history.

Replication

Living cells need organic molecules, known as nucleic acids, to store genetic
information and pass it to the next generation. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the
nucleic acid that carries information for nearly all living cells today and did for most of
Earth history. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) delivers genetic instructions to the location in a
cell where protein is synthesized.

The famous double helix structure of DNA is seen in this

animation: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/ADN_animation.gi
f.

Many scientists think that RNA was the first replicator. Since RNA catalyzes protein
synthesis, most scientists think that RNA came before proteins. RNA can also encode
genetic instructions and carry it to daughter cells, such as DNA.

The idea that RNA is the most primitive organic molecule is called the RNA world
hypothesis, referring to the possibility that the RNA is more ancient than DNA. RNA
can pass along genetic instructions as DNA can, and some RNA can carry out chemical
reactions like proteins can.

A video explaining the RNA world hypothesis is seen

here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkgb3yNgqg. Pieces of many scenarios
can be put together to come up with a plausible suggestion for how life began.

Simple Cells Evolve

Simple organic molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids eventually became
complex organic substances. Scientists think that the organic molecules adhered to clay
minerals, which provided the structure needed for these substances to organize. The
clays, along with their metal cations, catalyzed the chemical reactions that caused the
molecules to form polymers. The first RNA fragments could also have come together on
ancient clays.

For an organic molecule to become a cell, it must be able to separate itself from its
environment. To enclose the molecule, a lipid membrane grew around the organic
material. Eventually the molecules could synthesize their own organic material and
replicate themselves. These became the first cells.

E. coli (Escherichia coli) is a primitive prokaryote that may resemble the earliest cells.
The earliest cells were prokaryotes (Figure above). Although prokaryotes have a cell
membrane, they lack a cell nucleus and other organelles. Without a nucleus, RNA was
loose within the cell. Over time the cells became more complex.
A diagram of a bacterium.

Evidence for bacteria, the first single-celled life forms, goes back 3.5 billion years
(Figure above).
Eventually life began to diversify from these extremely simple cells. The last life form
that was the ancestor to all life that came afterward is called LUCA, which stands for
the Last Universal Common Ancestor. LUCA was a prokaryote but differed from the
first living cells because its genetic code was based on DNA. LUCA lived 3.5 to 3.8
billion years ago. The oldest fossils are tiny microbe-like objects that are 3.5 billion
years old.

Photosynthesis and the Changing Atmosphere

Without photosynthesis what did the earliest cells eat? Most likely they absorbed the
nutrients that floated around in the organic soup that surrounded them. After hundreds
of millions of years, these nutrients would have become less abundant.

Sometime around 3 billion years ago (about 1.5 billion years after Earth formed!),
photosynthesis began. Photosynthesis allowed organisms to use sunlight and
inorganic molecules, such as carbon dioxide and water, to create chemical energy that
they could use for food. To photosynthesize, a cell needs chloroplasts (Figure below).
Chloroplasts are visible in these cells found within the leaf of a water plant.

In what two ways did photosynthesis make the planet much more favorable for life?

1. Photosynthesis allowed organisms to create food energy so that they did not need to
rely on nutrients floating around in the environment. Photosynthesizing organisms could
also become food for other organisms.

2. A byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen. When photosynthesis evolved, all of a

sudden oxygen was present in large amounts in the atmosphere. For organisms used to
an anaerobic environment, the gas was toxic, and many organisms died out.

Earth’s Third Atmosphere

The addition of oxygen is what created Earth’s third atmosphere. This event, which
occurred about 2.5 billion years ago, is sometimes called the oxygen catastrophe
because so many organisms died. Although many species died out and went extinct,
this event is also called the Great Oxygenation Event because it was a great
opportunity. The organisms that survived developed a use for oxygen through cellular
respiration, the process by which cells can obtain energy from organic molecules.
What evidence do scientists have that large quantities of oxygen entered the
atmosphere? The iron contained in the rocks combined with the oxygen to form reddish
iron oxides. By the beginning of the Proterozoic, banded-iron formations (BIFs) were
forming. The oldest BIFs are 3.7 billion years old, but they are very common during the
Great Oxygenation Event 2.4 billion years ago (Figure below). By 1.8 billion years ago,
the amount of BIF declined. In recent times, the iron in these formations has been
mined, and that explains the location of the auto industry in the upper Midwest.

Banded-iron formations display alternating bands of iron oxide and iron-poor chert that
probably represent a seasonal cycle of an aerobic and an anaerobic environment.

With more oxygen in the atmosphere, ultraviolet radiation could create ozone. With the
formation of an ozone layer to protect the surface of the Earth from UV radiation, more
complex life forms could evolve.

Early Organisms

What were these organisms that completely changed the progression of life on Earth by
changing the atmosphere from anaerobic to aerobic? The oldest known fossils that are
from organisms known to photosynthesize are cyanobacteria (Figure below).
Cyanobacteria were present by 2.8 billion years ago, and some may have been around
as far back as 3.5 billion years.
Thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria in Yellowstone National park.

Modern cyanobacteria are also called blue-green algae. These organisms may consist
of a single or many cells and they are found in many different environments
(Figure below). Even now cyanobacteria account for 20% to 30% of photosynthesis on
Earth.

A large bloom of cyanobacteria is harmful to this lake.

Cyanobacteria were the dominant life forms in the Archean. Why would such a primitive
life-form have been dominant in the Precambrian? Many cyanobacteria lived in reef-like
structures known as stromatolites (Figure below). Stromatolites continued on into the
Cambrian but their numbers declined.
These rocks in Glacier National Park, Montana may contain some of the oldest fossil
microbes on Earth.

Eukaryotes

About 2 billion years ago, eukaryotes evolved. Eukaryotic cells have a nucleus that

encloses their DNA and RNA. All complex cells and nearly all multi-celled animals are
eukaryotic.
The evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes is an interesting subject in the study of
early life. Scientists think that small prokaryotic cells began to live together in
a symbiotic relationship; that is, different types of small cells were beneficial to each
other and none harmed the other. The small cell types each took on a specialized
function and became the organelles within a larger cell. Organelles supplied energy,
broke down wastes, or did other jobs that were needed for cells to become more
complex.

What is thought to be the oldest eukaryote fossil found so far is 2.1 billion years old.
Eukaryotic cells were much better able to live and replicate themselves, so they
continued to evolve and became the dominant life form over prokaryotic cells.

Multicellular Life

Prokaryotes and eukaryotes can both be multicellular. The first multi-celled organisms
were probably prokaryotic cyanobacteria. Multicellularity may have evolved more than
once in life history, likely at least once for plants and once for animals.
Early multicellular organisms were soft bodied and did not fossilize well, so little remains
of their existence. Multicellular organism will be discussed in the lesson, History of
Earth’s Complex Life Forms.

Lesson Summary
 After partial melting of the original basaltic crust began, silca-rich rock formed the early
continental crust.
 The oldest felsic continental crust is found in cratons. A craton found at the surface is a
shield; a sediment covered craton is a platform.
 Precambrian rocks help scientists piece together the geology of that time.
 The continents formed as cratons collided with microcontinents and island arcs to form
large continents.
 Rodinia was a supercontinent composed of Laurentia and other continents.
 Snowball Earth may have occurred during the late Precambrian and its end may have
led to the explosion of life forms that developed during the Ediacaran and Cambrian.
 Amino acids were essential for the origin of life. They link together to form proteins.
 RNA may have been the first and only nucleic acid at the beginning of life.
 A cell needs a way to replicate itself, a metabolism, and a way to separate itself from its
environment.
 An atmosphere that contains oxygen is important because of the ozone layer and
cellular respiration.
 Multicellular organisms evolved long after prokaryotes evolved and they may have
evolved more than once.

Review Questions
1. What is the difference between a craton, shield, and platform?
2. If a rock contains rounded grains of sediments, what can you tell about that rock?
3. What does a greenstone indicate about the plate tectonic environment in which it
formed?
4. What happened to all of the heat Earth had when it formed?
5. What was Laurentia and what lands was it composed of? What happened to it?
6. How was Rodinia like Pangaea?
7. What were the possible sources of amino acids on the ancient Earth?
8. What was the significance of the Miller-Urey experiment?
9. What is the RNA world hypothesis and why is it called that?
10. What is the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes?
11. What was LUCA? Is LUCA still alive?
12. Why are banded-iron formations important?
13. Why were cyanobacteria important in the early Earth?
14. How are eukaryotes thought to have originated?