Reading Activity 1 – Conditions of the Early Earth

In 1864, Louis Pasteur

STUDY COACH
described his experiments showing
Identify Key People.
that microbial life could not originate List the name of each
spontaneously in the absence of scientist introduced in
this section including
preexisting life. This work is the main contribution
considered a landmark in modern of the person made to
science because it settled a understanding
origin of life.
the

longstanding controversy over

spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is the
idea that organisms could form miraculously from non-living
material. But Pasteur's results posed
a new riddle for evolutionary biologists:
If life could only arise from life, how did living
organisms initially appear on the planet?
For more than 100 years biologists have accepted the
idea of biogenesis. But that still does not answer the
question: How did life begin on Earth? There are many
theories, none of which have been proven scientifically.
Scientists continue to look into theories and test hypotheses
about what conditions existed on early Earth.
Scientists hypothesize that two things happened before
life could appear on Earth. The first is that there had to be
organic molecules—molecules containing carbon. The
second is that the organic molecules must have formed into
more complex molecules such as proteins, carbohydrates,
and nucleic acids. These are the materials that are
absolutely necessary for life.
 In the 1930s, a Russian scientist named
STUDY COACH
Alexander Oparin suggested that
Reading check:
What two things had lightning striking Earth, heat from the
to happen before life sun, and Earth’s own heat started
could appear on
Earth?
chemical reactions using substances in
______________________ Earth’s atmosphere. The chemical
______________________
reactions made small organic molecules
that ended up in the ocean when it
rained. This turned the ocean into an
environment in which life could start.
During this time in England, British
scientist J.B.S. Haldane also shared the
same idea with Oparin. Haldane
suggested that the early oceans were a
solution of organic molecules, a “primitive
soup” from which life arose.
In 1953, two American scientists, Stanley Miller and
Harold Urey, tested the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis. They
mixed the elements thought to be in Earth’s early
atmosphere – water vapor, ammonia, methane, and
hydrogen gases – and added electricity. It became hot. When
the mixture cooled, it contained organic molecules such as
amino acids and sugars. This result provides support for
Oparin-Haldane hypothesis.
 Another hypothesis is that
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organic compounds were first
Reading check:
produced in deep-sea hydrothermal What are the two
vents. These are areas on the seafloor types of deep-sea
vents and how do they
where heated water and minerals, differ from each other?
with 300 – 400 ℃ temperature, gush ______________________
from the Earth’s interior to the ocean. ______________________
Unstable organic compounds may
have formed in these areas due to the high temperature.
Other deep-sea vents, called alkaline vents release “warm”
water instead of hot with a high pH (9-11), an environment
that may have been more suitable for the origin of life.
Scientists also tested whether it was possible for more
complex molecules to form from the organic molecules.
Scientists discovered that when amino acids are heated,
they turn into proteins. Many scientists were convinced that
complex organic molecules had formed in small pools of
warm water on Earth. In 1992, Sidney Fox caused complex
molecules to turn into protocells. Protocells or protobionts
are large, organized structure, surrounded by a membrane.
It is able to grow and divide.

Reading Activity 2 – The Record of Life

What do fossils tell us? Some rocks contain fossil. A
fossil is evidence of an organisms that lived long ago and
that became preserved in Earth’s rocks. From fossils,
scientists have discovered that the millions of plants and
animals living today are just a small part of all the species
of plants and animals that have ever lived. In fact, scientists
think that about 95 percent of all the species of plants and
animals that ever lived on Earth are now extinct.
Paleontologists are scientists who study ancient life.
They use fossils as clues to things that happened long ago.
A fossil can show the kinds of
organisms that lived long ago. Fossils STUDY COACH
can even show something about the Think it over:
Infer how might fossil
behavior of ancient animals. For teeth reveal an
example, fossil bones and teeth provide animal’s diet?
______________________
clues about the size of an animal, how ______________________
it moved around, and what it ate.
Paleontologists also learn about
ancient climate and geography. When they find a fossil of an
ancient plant that looks like a plant we see today, they might
conclude that the ancient plant needed the same type of
climate as today’s plant. If they find fossils of sea creatures
in an area that is currently a desert, they might realize that
the desert used to be an ocean.
Often, fossils formed when plants or animals died in
mud, sand, or clay. They became covered with more mud,
sand, or clay. Over time, the area where the living thing died
became compressed or packed down. It hardened into a type
of rock called sedimentary rock. In a similar way, fossils are
forming today at the bottoms of lakes, streams, and oceans.
Fossils are also found frozen in ice or hardened into a tree
sap called amber. Most fossils, though, are found in
sedimentary rock.
 STUDY COACH To find the specific age of a fossil or
Reading Check: rock, scientists use radiometric dating
Explain relative dating techniques. These methods measure the
of fossils.
______________________
rate of decay, or breakdown, of
______________________ radioactive isotopes within the rocks.
Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated this
way. For that reason, scientists use other
kinds of rocks that are near the sedimentary rocks.
Scientists use the decay rate like a clock. Scientists try to
find out the age of a rock by comparing the amount of
radioactive isotope it contains and the amount of new
isotope it forms after decaying. Let’s say there is a rock that
contains a radioactive isotope that decays to half its original
amount in one million years. That means that the half-life of
that particular isotope is one million years. If the rock has
equal amounts of the original isotope and the new isotope, it
must be one million years old. The two most common
isotopes that scientists use to date fossils and rocks are
potassium-40 and carbon-14. Both are radioactive isotopes.

Reading Activity 3 – A trip through Geologic time

By looking at fossils and by figuring out the age of rocks,
scientists have come up with something like a calendar of
Earth’s history. This calendar is called the geologic time
scale. The scale is divided into four sections called eras.
Each era represents a very long period of time. The four eras
are Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
 Each era is subdivided into STUDY COACH
periods. Scientists selected the Reading Check:
divisions based on information from What is a mass
fossils. Each division of the time scale extinction?
______________________
is based on the kinds of organisms ______________________
that lived during that time. The fossil
record also shows several times when a mass extinction took
place. A mass extinction is an event that happens when
many organisms disappear from the fossil record at the
same time.
The earliest fossils have been found in Precambrian
rocks. Scientists have found these fossils in the deserts of
Western Australia and they also have found similar fossils
on other continents. The fossil looks like a modern species
of photosynthetic cyanobacteria. These early fossils show
that during the Pre-Cambrian era, living things were mostly
one-celled organisms. By the end of the Precambrian era,
however, multi-celled organisms such as sponges, and
jellyfishes were present. The Precambrian era makes up
about 87 percent of Earth’s history.
During the next era, the Paleozoic era, the number of
different kinds of organisms increased greatly. In fact, there
was such a variety of living things that the Paleozoic era has
been divided into six different periods. During one of the
periods, the Cambrian, so many new
STUDY COACH
types of living things appeared that
Reading Check:
What is the “explosion”
paleontologists often refer to an
paleontologists refer to? “explosion.” During this time, many
______________________
______________________
different types of animals such as
worms, sea stars, and arthropods lived
in the oceans. Scientists also think that
during the Paleozoic era fishes appeared. These were the first
animals with backbones.
Ferns, seed plants, and four-legged animals such as
amphibians and reptiles also appeared during the Paleozoic
era. However, the Paleozoic era ended with the largest mass
extinction that shows up in the fossil record. At that time,
about 90 percent of species that lived in the oceans and
about 70 percent of land species disappeared.
The Mesozoic era is divided into three periods: the
Triassic Period, the Jurassic Period, and the Cretaceous
Period. Fossils show that mammals appeared on Earth
during the Triassic Period. Many scientists think that birds
evolved from dinosaurs during the Jurassic Period. New
types of mammals appeared during the Cretaceous Period.
Also, flowering plants became plentiful on Earth. A mass
extinction occurred at the end of the Mesozoic era. This was
the end of the dinosaurs. Scientists estimate that at that
time, two-thirds of all living species became extinct. Some
scientists propose that Earth was struck by a meteor at this
time. The collision could have caused a huge, possibly
poisonous dust cloud to fill the atmosphere. This may have
changed the climate and so fewer species survived. There is
a huge crater in the waters off eastern Mexico that scientists
suggest was the impact site of this meteor.
It is thought that in the early part of the Mesozoic era,
all the continents were joined together as one large
landmass. Later, the landmass broke up and the continents
began to drift apart. By the end of the Mesozoic era, the
position of the continents was similar to what we know
today.
 The current era, the Cenozoic, began about 65 million
years ago. That is December 26 on your calendar. We live in
the Cenozoic era. During this time large mammals and
humans first appeared. The modern human species first
appeared about 200 000 years ago.