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.
Throughout the Proterozoic era, from about 2.3 billion years ago until around 575 million years ago, life on Earth was mostly single-celled and small. Earth's biota consisted of bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotic algae. Food webs began to develop, with amoebas feeding on bacteria and algae.