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Geological and Geochemical Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life

Overview of attention for article published in Astrobiology, August 2018
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (94th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (72nd percentile)

Mentioned by

news
3 news outlets
blogs
3 blogs
twitter
10 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page
wikipedia
2 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
1 Google+ user
video
1 YouTube creator

Citations

dimensions_citation
60 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
103 Mendeley
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Title
Geological and Geochemical Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life
Published in
Astrobiology, August 2018
DOI 10.1089/ast.2017.1778
Pubmed ID
Authors

Norman H. Sleep

Abstract

The traditional tree of life from molecular biology with last universal common ancestor (LUCA) branching into bacteria and archaea (though fuzzy) is likely formally valid enough to be a basis for discussion of geological processes on the early Earth. Biologists infer likely properties of nodal organisms within the tree and, hence, the environment they inhabited. Geologists both vet tenuous trees and putative origin of life scenarios for geological and ecological reasonability and conversely infer geological information from trees. The latter approach is valuable as geologists have only weakly constrained the time when the Earth became habitable and the later time when life actually existed to the long interval between ∼4.5 and ∼3.85 Ga where no intact surface rocks are known. With regard to vetting, origin and early evolution hypotheses from molecular biology have recently centered on serpentinite settings in marine and alternatively land settings that are exposed to ultraviolet sunlight. The existence of these niches on the Hadean Earth is virtually certain. With regard to inferring geological environment from genomics, nodes on the tree of life can arise from true bottlenecks implied by the marine serpentinite origin scenario and by asteroid impact. Innovation of a very useful trait through a threshold allows the successful organism to quickly become very abundant and later root a large clade. The origin of life itself, that is, the initial Darwinian ancestor, the bacterial and archaeal roots as free-living cellular organisms that independently escaped hydrothermal chimneys above marine serpentinite or alternatively from shallow pore-water environments on land, the Selabacteria root with anoxygenic photosynthesis, and the Terrabacteria root colonizing land are attractive examples that predate the geological record. Conversely, geological reasoning presents likely events for appraisal by biologists. Asteroid impacts may have produced bottlenecks by decimating life. Thermophile roots of bacteria and archaea as well as a thermophile LUCA are attractive.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 10 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 103 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 103 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 18 17%
Researcher 17 17%
Student > Bachelor 12 12%
Professor 9 9%
Other 7 7%
Other 21 20%
Unknown 19 18%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Earth and Planetary Sciences 28 27%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 12 12%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 10 10%
Chemistry 8 8%
Physics and Astronomy 4 4%
Other 17 17%
Unknown 24 23%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 50. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 December 2023.
All research outputs
#845,254
of 25,385,509 outputs
Outputs from Astrobiology
#203
of 1,395 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#18,022
of 341,989 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Astrobiology
#10
of 37 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,385,509 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,395 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 39.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 341,989 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 37 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its contemporaries.