The history of the biosphere

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Gravity is Cool, or, Why our Universe is Hospitable to Life
By Freeman J. Dyson, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, Oppenheimer lecture, given at the University of California, Berkeley, California, 9 March 2000. The existence of life depends crucially on the fact that time has these two faces, the quiet and the violent, cleanly separated from each other.
In Space, Clues to the Seeds of Life: Chemical ‘Membranes’ Could Revise Thinking on Origins
By Kathy Sawyer, Washington Post, Tuesday 30 January 2001. Scientists have for the first time shown that when simple chemicals are exposed to the harsh conditions of deep space, the molecules spontaneously arrange themselves into the hollow structures that look like the cell membranes found in all living things.
Signs of Earliest Life in Ocean Depths
By Kathy Sawyer, Washington Post, Thursday 8 June 2000. Geologists have found apparent fossil evidence of microbial life in scalding hot deep-ocean vent systems on the very young Earth, 2.7 billion years earlier than previously known. The cradle of life may have been a sulfurous, subterranean inferno, not unlike a medieval vision of hell.
Monkeys show sense of fairness, study says
By Sean Markey, National Geographic News, 17 September 2003. Researchers studying brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) have found that the highly social, cooperative species native to South America show a sense of fairness, the first time such behavior has been documented in a species other than humans.