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. 2015 Dec 1;15(12):1031–1042. doi: 10.1089/ast.2015.1113

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© The Author(s) 2015; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.

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FIG. 4. — A conceptual representation of hypothetical pathways from abiotic to living states. An unspecified measure of complexity and/or functionality increases from left to right, and an unspecified measure of the energy or chemical landscape increases bottom to top. Labeled points illustrate various hypothetical situations: (1) A bottleneck—all histories must pass through here for terrestrial OoL—this therefore represents a critical focus for geological study or exploration (e.g., Mars), cf. Fig. 2. (2) An alternate (nonterrestrial/actual) abiotic environment nonetheless leads to an exact match to terrestrial OoL. (3) A terrestrial abiotic landscape eventually leads to a nonterrestrial (alternate) biotic system of lower complexity. (4) A pathway exhibits rapid diversification of preliving systems (e.g., molecular structures) although only one leads to an OoL event. (5) A nonterrestrial pathway splits at advanced complexity and leads to a separate OoL event within the same abiotic environment.