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Hugo Olierook, Senior Research Fellow in Geology, Curtin University

Fresh water and key conditions for life appeared on Earth half a billion years earlier than we thought

Ralf Lehmann/Shutterstock

We need two ingredients for life to start on a planet: dry land and (fresh) water. Strictly, the water doesn’t have to be fresh, but fresh water can only occur on dry land.

Only with those two conditions met can you convert the building blocks of life, amino acids and nucleic acids into tangible bacterial life that heralds the start of the evolutionary cycle.

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