The meteorite impact may have done more than reshape the Earth’s surface. New research suggests they may have created the high-temperature, chemical-rich environment necessary for life to begin.
“From a scientific perspective, no one knows how life emerged from the early Earth, where no life existed,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned a bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?”
Cinquemani led a scientific review published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering examining where life may have first appeared. The research focuses on hydrothermal vents, where heated mineral-laden water moves through rocks and into surrounding water, creating the right energy and chemical reactions for complex reactions.
Her analysis focuses on hydrothermal systems formed by meteorite impacts as an overlooked but potentially important setting for the beginning of life. These environments may have been widespread on early Earth, making them strong candidates for where life first established itself.
From class projects to scientific publications
The study, co-authored with Rutgers University oceanographer Richard Lutz, is unique in that Cinquemani began the research as an undergraduate project and later turned it into a peer-reviewed publication.
Lutz: “That’s amazing.” “It’s common for undergraduate students to be part of a paper.Faculty always choose undergraduate students to work on papers and projects.But it’s difficult for an undergraduate to be the lead author.”
The project began during Cinquemani’s senior year in a course called “Hydrothermal Vents,” taught by Lutz, a distinguished professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Her first task was to investigate whether Mars’ hydrothermal vents could have supported life.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know anything about this topic,'” she said. “When I think about the origins of biology on another planet, I think, wow, I don’t know how to do that.” This research took her beyond biology to chemistry, physics and geology, she said.
After graduation, she expanded that assignment into a complete review comparing systems produced by deep-sea vents and collisions. This paper went through an extensive peer review process.
“I have never seen such a rigorous vetting process,” Lutz said. “There were 15 pages of comments and five different peer reviews. She had patience and perseverance, and the paper turned out great.”
Hydrothermal vents as cradles of life
Scientists have long considered deep-sea hydrothermal vents as possible sites for life to have originated. Discovered in the late 1970s, these systems support entire ecosystems in complete darkness.
Instead of relying on sunlight, organisms in these environments harness chemical energy from compounds such as hydrogen sulfide. This process, known as chemosynthesis, allows life to thrive without photosynthesis.
Some craters utilize heat from volcanic activity deep in the earth, while others are formed by chemical reactions between water and rocks that generate heat without using magma. In both cases, warm, nutrient-rich pockets form in the cold, barren depths of the ocean.
Impact craters as hidden chemical factories
Cinquemani’s research draws attention to a little-studied type of hydrothermal system formed by meteorite impacts.
When a large meteorite hits the Earth, it generates enough heat to melt the surrounding rocks. As craters cool and fill with water, they can develop into hot, mineral-rich systems, similar to deep-sea vents.
“The lake surrounds a very, very warm core,” Cinquemani said. “And now we have hydrothermal vent systems created by the heat from collisions, just like in the deep ocean.”
To understand how these environments support life, she looked at three famous impact sites from different periods in Earth’s history. The Chicxulub crater, located beneath Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, formed about 65 million years ago and was the site of a long-lasting hydrothermal system. Horton Crater in Canada’s Arctic was formed about 31 million years ago. India’s Lake Lonar, which was formed around 50,000 years ago, still has water and provides insight into how such systems evolve.
These shock-driven systems can last thousands to tens of thousands of years, providing enough time for simple molecules to combine into more complex structures that may eventually lead to life.
A new perspective on the early state of the Earth
Asteroid impacts frequently occurred on the early Earth, and these environments are thought to have become common. Shocks are often destructive, but they may also have created conditions suitable for life.
This perspective is based on decades of research into deep-sea vents and expands the range of places where life could have originated.
Lutz was one of the early researchers to explore deep-sea vents when they were first discovered. As a young postdoc, he joined a pioneering expedition that took him more than a mile below the ocean’s surface in the submersible Alvin, where he observed ecosystems thriving in complete darkness.
These discoveries helped establish that life can exist without sunlight and reshaped scientific understanding of extreme environments.
“We’ve been talking for years about the possibility that life originated in deep-sea hydrothermal vents,” Lutz said.
Cinquemani’s work brings together these well-established ideas, as well as new evidence suggesting that the systems produced by the shock may also play a role, and in some cases may provide particularly favorable conditions for the initial chemical reactions.
Impact on extraterrestrial life
This discovery could also have implications for the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. Hydrothermal activity is thought to exist on the ocean floor of icy moons such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. Similar systems may have formed in early Martian impact craters.
If these environments on Earth can support the chemistry necessary for life, it could lead scientists to promising places to look beyond Earth.
driven by curiosity
For Cinquemani, this research reflects a deeper human drive to understand our origins.
“Humans are incredibly curious creatures,” Cinquemani says. She works as a technician at Rutgers University’s New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center in Cape May, New Jersey, where she supports aquaculture research while preparing to pursue advanced research in marine science. “We question everything. We may never know exactly how we started, but we can do our best to understand how things happened.”
