Web Links
8. The origin of life
Read about the origin of life at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-life-on-earth
and follow up links from:
http://biology.fullerton.edu/biol404/hol/hol_ch1.html
The NASA web site also has a detailed overview of early Earth environments at:
http://astrobiology.ucla.edu/pages/res3a.html
Good web sites on prokaryotes are:
http://textbookofbacteriology.net/procaryotes.html
http://www.palaeos.com/Bacteria/default.htm
http://www.bacterialphylogeny.com
and for Archaea see:
http://www.astrobiology.com/extreme.html
David Catling’s astrobiology pages are at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/
Box 8.1
Read about the dispute over the Apex Chert “fossils” at:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=684
http://www.richardcorfield.com/pages/other_writing/moving_finger/finger_spring_03.htm
Box 8.2
Read more about the three-domain tree of life at:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/alllife/threedomains.html
and find the most comprehensive universal tree of life (Ciccarelli et al. 2006) at:
http://www.embl.de/aboutus/communication_outreach/media_relations/2006/060302_heidelberg/
Box 8.3
Read more about Bangiomorpha at:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/031110/10animals.htm
http://www.radionetherlands.nl/features/science/sexy021202.html
Details of the evolutionary background to the origin of sex may be read at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sex
and the origin of multicellularity at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_multicellularity
Figure 8.2
A full account of the RNA world is given at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis
http://www.panspermia.org/rnaworld.htm
Read more at:
http://www.postmodern.com/~jka/rnaworld/nfrna/nf-index.html
and an account of the work of Andy Ellington in exploring the RNA world at:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/ellington_01
