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.
1 Life first appeared on the planet 3.5 billion years ago in the form of single celled organisms. 2  Modern humans have only existed on the planet for around 200,000 years.  The Earth is less well mapped than the Moon, Venus or Mars because the majority of its surface is covered by water.