Early life on earth

Introduction : The coherence of history / Stephen Jay Gould

The planetary setting of prebiotic evolution / Sherwood Chang

Early environments : constraints and opportunities for early evolution / Donald R. Lowe

Earth's early atmosphere : constraints and opportunities for early evolution / Kenneth M. Towe

Early chemical stages in the origin of life / Juan Oró

The transition from non-living to living / Antonio Lazcano

The RNA world, its predecessors and descendants / Antonio Lazcano

Molecular origin and evolution of early biological energy conversion / Herrick Baltscheffsky and Margareta Baltscheffsky

Sources and geochemical evolution of RNA precursor molecules : the role of phosphate / Benjamin Gedulin and Gustaf Arrhenius

Self-assembly and function of primitive membrane structures / David W. Deamer, Elizabeth Harang Mahon, and Giovanni Bosco

Vitalysts and virulysts : a theory of self-expanding reproduction / Günter Wächtershäuser

Protocell life cycles / Leo W. Buss

Early evolution of genes and genomes / Tomoko Ohta

The lesson of Archaebacteria / Karl O. Stetter

The early diversification of life / Otto Kandler

The emergence, diversification, and role of photosynthetic eubacteria / Beverly K. Pierson

The origin of eukaryotes and evolution into major kingdoms / Mitchell L. Sogin

The oldest known records of life : early Archean stromatolites, microfossils, and organic matter / J. William Schopf

The Archean-Proterozoic transition and its environmental implications / Ján Veizer

Global methanotrophy at the Archean-Proterozoic transition / John M. Hayes

Early Proterozoic atmospheric change / Heinrich D. Holland

Trends in Precambrian carbonate sediments and their implication for understanding evolution / John P. Grotzinger

Biomarkers in the Proterozoic record / Guy Ourisson

Stromatolites : the main source of information on the evolution of the early benthos / Malcolm R. Walter

Proterozoic eukaryotes : evidence from biology and geology / Bruce Runnegar

Early ecosystems : limitations imposed by the fossil record / Gonzalo Vidal

The role of phenotypic comparisons of living protists in the determination of probable eukaryotic phylogeny / F.J.R. "Max" Taylor

Combinatorial generation of taxonomic diversity : implication of symbiogenesis for the Proterozoic fossil record / Lynn Margulis and Joel E. Cohen

The continuing importance of cyanobacteria / Stjepko Golubic

Proterozoic carbonaceous compressions ("metaphytes and worms") / Hans J. Hofmann

Early multicellular fossils / Sun Weiguo

Vendian body fossils and trace fossils / Mikhail A. Fedonkin

Early multicellular life : late Proterozoic fossils and the Cambrian explosion / Adolf Seilacher

The Cambrian explosion / James W. Valentine

The advent of animal skeletons / Stefan Bengtson

Evolution of algal and cyanobacterial calcification / Robert Riding

Neoproterozoic evolution and environmental change / Andrew H. Knoll

Early metazoan evolution : first steps to an integration of molecular and morphological data / Simon Conway Morris

Ideas on early animal evolution / Jan Bergström

Molecular phylogeny and the origin of Metazoa / Richard Christen

Evolution of the "lower" Metazoa / Reinhard M. Rieger

Developmental mechanisms in the evolution of animal form : origins and evolvability of body plans / Rudolf A. Raff

From protein domains to extinct phyla : reverse-engineering approaches to the evolution of biological complexities / George L. Gabor Miklos and K.S.W. Campbell.