A shallow, salty lake in Canada may have an explanation for the origin of life on Earth

A theory suggests that when life first emerged on Earth roughly four billion years ago, it looked like a volcanic landscape devoid of flora and fauna rather than an ocean setting.

According to a study published inNature, Last Chance Lake, a shallow, salty body of water on a volcanic rock in the Canadian province of British Columbia, holds a clue that carbonate-rich lakes in ancient Earth could have been the "cradle of life."

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David Catling, the study co-author and a professor of geosciences at the University of Washington, said, "We were able to look for the specific conditions that people use to synthesise the building blocks of life in nature. We think that we have a very promising place for the origin of life."

The research team made the lake a point of study after a literature review unveiled an unpublished thesis from the 1990s, reporting high phosphate levels there.

The Last Chance Lake, located on a volcanic plateau in British Columbia, is only a foot deep. It contains the highest levels of concentrated phosphate recorded in any natural body of water on Earth.

Phosphate is a critical component of biological molecules, as the chemical compound contains the life-sustaining element phosphorus. RNA and DNA contain phosphate, and it's also present in ATP, a molecule necessary for energy production in all life forms.

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According to Sebastian Haas, a postdoctoral researcher studying microbiology and chemistry of aquatic environments at the University of Washington, the abundance of phosphate at Last Chance Lake is over a thousand times more than what is typical for oceans or lakes.

The research team visited Last Chance Lake to collect and analyse water and sediment samples between 2021 and 2022. They discovered that the lake has an abundance of phosphate and the mineral dolomite. Dolomite allows phosphorus to build in such an environment. "We are adding credibility to the idea that this environment would be favourable to the origin of life and is plausible," Haas said.

However, Last Chance Lake wasn't four billion years old. It's estimated to have been around less than 10,000 years. Although the site is a natural snapshot of the past or a modern analogue, it offers scientists to understand what primordial Earth may have looked like outside of a lab.

"There’ a every reason to believe that similar lakes would have occurred on the first land about 4 billion years ago, because the volcanic rocks that Last Chance Lake sits on are basically a prerequisite for forming soda lakes," Haas said. "And what we're partially showing here is that soda lake water chemistry is the prerequisite for these high phosphate levels."

(With inputs from agencies)