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Life's Rocky Start

Air, water and rock were the only raw materials available on the early earth. The first living entities must have been fabricated from these primitive resources. New experiments suggest that minerals the basic components of the rocks could have played starring roles in that dramatic feat.

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Robert M. Hazen, PhD, is Senior Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory and Clarence Robinson Professor of Earth Sciences at George Mason University. He is the Executive Director of the Deep Carbon Observatory.

More by Robert M. Hazen
Scientific American Magazine Vol 284 Issue 4This article was originally published with the title “Life's Rocky Start” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 284 No. 4 (), p. 76
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0401-76