ReviewNature2019
Challenges in evidencing the earliest traces of life.
Review in Nature, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed.
- Novel Antarctic chemolithotroph drives iron biomineralization.Microbiome · 2026Article
- HSP47 in Mitochondria: Roles in Apoptosis, Signal Transduction, and Protein and Virus Transportation.Cells · 2026Review
- Abyssal hydrothermal alteration drives the evolution from simple alkanes to prebiotic molecular complexity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Fraternal cooperation of hierarchical cancer parallels metazoan multicellularity and eusociality.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- A comprehensive database for high-throughput identification of archaeal lipids using high-resolution mass spectrometry.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Organic geochemical evidence for life in Archean rocks identified by pyrolysis-GC-MS and supervised machine learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Multi-technique characterization of iron reduction by an AntarcticApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- A diverse Palaeoproterozoic microbial ecosystem implies early eukaryogenesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The emergence of metabolisms through Earth history and implications for biospheric evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- What the earliest evidence for life tells us about the early evolution of the biosphere.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Aluminous phyllosilicates promote exceptional nanoscale preservation of biogeochemical heterogeneities in Archaean siliciclastic microbial mats.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Concomitant formation of protocells and prebiotic compounds under a plausible early Earth atmosphere.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The Role of Atmospheric Composition in Defining the Habitable Zone Limits and SupportingLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Roles of Mitochondria in Human Being's Life and Aging.Biomolecules · 2024Review
- Rethinking life and predicting its origin.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2024Article
- The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Microbes as marine habitat formers and ecosystem engineers.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Review
- Higher-order interactions and emergent properties of microbial communities: The power of synthetic ecology.Heliyon · 2024Review
- Abiotic synthesis of graphitic carbons in the Eoarchean Saglek-Hebron metasedimentary rocks.Nature communications · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Earth has been habitable for 4.3 billion years, and the earliest rock record indicates the presence of a microbial biosphere by at least 3.4 billion years ago-and disputably earlier. Possible traces of life can be morphological or chemical but abiotic processes that mimic or alter them, or subsequent contamination, may challenge their interpretation. Advances in micro- and nanoscale analyses, as well as experimental approaches, are improving the characterization of these biosignatures and constraining abiotic processes, when combined with the geological context. Reassessing the evidence of early life is challenging, but essential and timely in the quest to understand the origin and evolution of life, both on Earth and beyond.
Indexed as
Identifiers
31435057What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.