Venus, Earth, and Mars all had thin atmospheres, liquid water on their surface, and the organic ingredients that could give rise to life. In order to go from precursors to life to actual life, however, it's believed that we needed the right environment. But perhaps the most likely location for life to begin on Earth is the best of all worlds: hydrothermal fields. What we do know, however, is that if we reconstruct the evolutionary tree of every extant organism found on Earth today, they all share the same ancestor. To the best of our knowledge, life on Earth has existed almost as long as Earth itself has.

Source: Forbes March 13, 2019 06:00 UTC