Mars as origin of early life, photo by Kevin Dooley via Creative Commons

On Thursday, at Goldschmidt, an international geochemistry conference in Florence, American chemist Steven Benner proposed that Mars was probably better suited than Earth to forming the elements needed to produce early life. 

"The evidence seems to be building that we are actually Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock," said Benner. 

Benner and his colleagues based the argument on their understanding of how the first life-producing molecules probably were formed. 

They argue that life-forming minerals would have dissolved in Earth’s oceans, but that Mars’s mineral-rich soil would have been ideal for forming life-forming RNA. Without the convenience of modern airplanes, our early ancestors would have been reliant on meteorites to make the journey from Mars to Earth. 

Although previous scientists have suggested that Mars may have been the birthplace of early life, Benner is the first to explain how boron and molybdenum could have worked together to form life-creating molecules.   

"It’s only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidized that it is able to influence how early life formed,” explains Benner. “This form of molybdenum couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago, the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did.”

More testing remains to be done regarding the validity of Benner’s findings, but his research could open the door to more exploration about the origins of life on Earth.

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