Introduction : The coherence of history / Stephen Jay Gould -- The planetary setting of prebiotic evolution / Sherwood Chang -- Early environments : constraints and opportunities for early evolution / Donald R. Lowe -- Earth's early atmosphere : constraints and opportunities for early evolution / Kenneth M. Towe -- Early chemical stages in the origin of life / Juan Oró -- The transition from non-living to living / Antonio Lazcano -- The RNA world, its predecessors and descendants / Antonio Lazcano -- Molecular origin and evolution of early biological energy conversion / Herrick Baltscheffsky and Margareta Baltscheffsky -- Sources and geochemical evolution of RNA precursor molecules : the role of phosphate / Benjamin Gedulin and Gustaf Arrhenius -- Self-assembly and function of primitive membrane structures / David W. Deamer, Elizabeth Harang Mahon, and Giovanni Bosco -- Vitalysts and virulysts : a theory of self-expanding reproduction / Günter Wächtershäuser -- Protocell life cycles / Leo W. Buss -- Early evolution of genes and genomes / Tomoko Ohta -- The lesson of Archaebacteria / Karl O. Stetter -- The early diversification of life / Otto Kandler -- The emergence, diversification, and role of photosynthetic eubacteria / Beverly K. Pierson -- The origin of eukaryotes and evolution into major kingdoms / Mitchell L. Sogin -- The oldest known records of life : early Archean stromatolites, microfossils, and organic matter / J. William Schopf -- The Archean-Proterozoic transition and its environmental implications / Ján Veizer -- Global methanotrophy at the Archean-Proterozoic transition / John M. Hayes -- Early Proterozoic atmospheric change / Heinrich D. Holland -- Trends in Precambrian carbonate sediments and their implication for understanding evolution / John P. Grotzinger -- Biomarkers in the Proterozoic record / Guy Ourisson -- Stromatolites : the main source of information on the evolution of the early benthos / Malcolm R. Walter -- Proterozoic eukaryotes : evidence from biology and geology / Bruce Runnegar -- Early ecosystems : limitations imposed by the fossil record / Gonzalo Vidal -- The role of phenotypic comparisons of living protists in the determination of probable eukaryotic phylogeny / F.J.R. "Max" Taylor -- Combinatorial generation of taxonomic diversity : implication of symbiogenesis for the Proterozoic fossil record / Lynn Margulis and Joel E. Cohen -- The continuing importance of cyanobacteria / Stjepko Golubic -- Proterozoic carbonaceous compressions ("metaphytes and worms") / Hans J. Hofmann -- Early multicellular fossils / Sun Weiguo -- Vendian body fossils and trace fossils / Mikhail A. Fedonkin -- Early multicellular life : late Proterozoic fossils and the Cambrian explosion / Adolf Seilacher -- The Cambrian explosion / James W. Valentine -- The advent of animal skeletons / Stefan Bengtson -- Evolution of algal and cyanobacterial calcification / Robert Riding -- Neoproterozoic evolution and environmental change / Andrew H. Knoll -- Early metazoan evolution : first steps to an integration of molecular and morphological data / Simon Conway Morris -- Ideas on early animal evolution / Jan Bergström -- Molecular phylogeny and the origin of Metazoa / Richard Christen -- Evolution of the "lower" Metazoa / Reinhard M. Rieger -- Developmental mechanisms in the evolution of animal form : origins and evolvability of body plans / Rudolf A. Raff -- From protein domains to extinct phyla : reverse-engineering approaches to the evolution of biological complexities / George L. Gabor Miklos and K.S.W. Campbell