ABSTRACT
Since its beginnings in the mid-1960s, workers worldwide have joined studies of Precambrian life and stunning progress has been made. Spurred in part by new analytical techniques – designed also for studies of rocks from Mars – this progress is primarily the result of the dedicated good hard work by many scientists in many countries. Thanks to these advances, we now know that there is a continuous fossil record extending at least to 3,500 million years ago – a seven-fold increase since Darwin’s time (and even from 1961, when Bill Schopf began his quest). Nevertheless, the science today is a scant 50 years young. Much remains to be learned. We still do not know the history of changes in day-length over geological time, nor do we have evidence of the “primordial soup” from which life is thought to have emerged. There are many other unanswered questions – the history of biologically useful atmospheric gases and of microbial consortia, rates of evolution, and numerous others. To many, the 2000s will be known as the “Century of Genetic Engineering,” but it will likely also be viewed as the “Century of Evolution,” the clues to unraveling fundamental evolutionary questions being sequestered in the genomes of living systems.
