Genesis on Planet Earth: The Search for Life?s Beginnings

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Genesis on Planet Earth: The Search for Life?s Beginnings
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Author William Day
Published 1979/1984
Publisher House of Talos Publishers / Yale University Press
Pages 408
ISBN 0300029543

Life's greatest mystery is its beginning.  Sealed in lithified sediments of ancient volcanic lakes are teh fossil remains of microorganisms that lived on earth 3.4 billion years ago.  These are the earliest known form of life and progenitors of all living things.  But where did they come from?  What happened in the billion years between the formation of the earth and the appearance of these primitive microbes that led to their development?

In Genesis on Planet Earth the author takes the reader back in time to that primordial scene and the chemical and geological circumstances that led to the formation of biological systems.  He follows the evolution of life forms and the amnner they are locked in with the earth's own evolution.  Then, after defining the essential requirementsw for a primal cell, he delineates the experiments simulating the conditions of primordial earth that demonstrate the probable events which led to the origin of life.

This book is both comprehensive scope and specific in technical detail.  It is a well-documented account of how life began that is consistent with the modern principles of biochemistry and molecular biology.  The enegaging style of the author has produced a treatise that is easy to read with the authority of a research chemist who has worked in the field.

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