The Gulf of Mexico basin was created by an episode of crustal extension and sea-floor spreading during the Mesozoic breakup of Pangea (Salvador, 1987; Sawyer et al., 1991; Buffler and Thomas, 1994; Harry and Londono, 2004; Jacques and Clegg, 2002).
Title: Life Before Earth. Abstract: An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide.
Not only does it tell us much about Earth's evolution and the early surface conditions on Earth, as Brocks points out, it will also inform the hunt for life on other planets. If we found out the oldest life is [only] three billion years old we would have to reinterpret everything, he says.