RNA World, a natural explanation for the origin of life, has a Catch-22 dilemma. Stanley-Urey’s experiments in the early 1950s laid the foundation for the RNA hypothesis.
Their experiments demonstrated that essential biological molecules, specifically amino acids, could have naturally emerged in Earth’s presumed early environment. However, amino acids alone, while essential for life, since they cannot reproduce, cannot account for abiogenesis – the origin of life.
In The Origin of Species, along with natural selection, Charles Darwin (pictured left) included an unexpected explanation for the origin of life. In the six editions between 1859 and 1872, the last sentence he ventured on an origin of life concept, noting —
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.”
The discovery of a primate-like fossil named Ida in 1983 launched a complex, nearly three-decade-long investigative and media blitz and bust. Ida (pictured left with Bloomberg and Hurum) was discovered in the Messel quarry (pictured right) in Hesse, Germany.
Rumors soon emerged that this pristine, primate-like fossil appeared to be a potential link in human evolution. In 1995, the pit was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. By 2009, Jens Lorenz Franzen (pictured right below with Ida and Hurum), head of Paleoanthropology at the Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt, declared the fossil as –
“The eighth wonder of the world.”
