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.
That includes life on Earth, which will surely be wiped out eventually. But how long does it have? The fossil record tells us that life on Earth has lasted at least 3.5 billion years. In that time it has survived being frozen, clobbered by rocks from space, mass poisoning, and even lethal radiation.