Scientist reveals `how life began on Earth `

Washington: Indian-origin paleontologist, Dr. Sankar Chatterjee, believes that he has found the answer to the question about how life on Earth began more than 3.8 billion years ago.

Chatterjee, a professor of geoscience at Texas Tech University and curator of paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech University argues that in addition to bringing water and the chemical constituents of life, asteroids and meteors made impact craters that became "crucibles" in which chemical reactions that ultimately gave rise to living cells took place. He believes that meteorites deposited organic materials in them and then icy comets that crashed into Earth melted, and filled them with water. He said that additional meteorite strikes made volcanically driven geothermal vents in the Earth`s crust that heated and stirred the water. The "primordial soup" then mixed the chemicals together and led to the formation of molecules of ever increasing complexity-and eventually life. To arrive at this result, Chatterjee studied sites that contained world`s oldest fossils in Greenland, Australia, and South Africa.