New research suggests that the origins of life may be tied not only to deep-sea hydrothermal vents but also to environments created by meteor impacts.
Meteor strikes may have played a surprising role in the origin of life on Earth by generating hot, mineral-rich environments where early biological chemistry could develop, according to a scientific review led by a recent Rutgers University graduate.
“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her 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 authored the review, published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, which examines where life may have first emerged. The study centers on hydrothermal vents, where heated, mineral-laden water moves through rock and enters surrounding water, creating energy gradients and chemical conditions that can drive complex reactions.
Expanding Beyond Traditional Theories
Her analysis highlights hydrothermal systems formed by meteor impacts as an overlooked but potentially important setting for life’s beginnings. These systems may have been common on early Earth, making them strong candidates for where life first developed.
The paper was co-authored with Rutgers oceanographer Richard Lutz and stands out as an unusual accomplishment for an undergraduate researcher. What began as a classroom assignment ultimately became a peer-reviewed publication.
“It’s amazing,” Lutz said. “You often have undergraduates that are part of papers faculty choose undergraduates all the time to work on papers and projects. But for an undergraduate to be the lead author is a huge deal.”
The work started during Cinquemani’s senior year in a course titled “Hydrothermal Vents,” taught by Lutz, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Her original assignment explored whether similar vent systems on Mars could have supported life.
“I was like, ‘I know nothing about this topic,’” she said. “Thinking about the origins of biology on another planet was like, whoa. Not sure how I’m going to do this.” The topic went beyond her usual comfort zone of biology and extended into chemistry, physics, and geology, she said.
After graduating, she expanded the project into a broader review comparing impact-driven systems with deep-sea vents. The paper underwent an intensive review process before being accepted.
“I have never seen such a rigorous review process,” Lutz said. “There were 15 pages of comments and five different rounds of reviews. She had the patience and perseverance, and the paper turned out magnificently.”
Deep-Sea Vents as a Foundation
Deep-sea hydrothermal vents have long been considered a likely setting for life’s origin. Discovered in the late 1970s, these environments support entire ecosystems without sunlight. Instead of photosynthesis, microbes rely on chemical energy from substances such as hydrogen sulfide in a process known as chemosynthesis.
Some vents are fueled by heat from volcanic activity within Earth, while others result from chemical reactions between water and rock that produce heat without magma. In both cases, they create localized warm environments that support chemical activity on the otherwise cold ocean floor.
Cinquemani’s research places greater emphasis on hydrothermal systems triggered by meteor impacts, an area receiving increasing scientific interest.
When a large meteor hits Earth, it releases extreme heat and melts nearby rock. As the crater cools and fills with water, it can form a hot, mineral-rich system similar to deep-sea vents.
“You have a lake surrounding a very, very warm center,” Cinquemani said. “And now you get a hydrothermal vent system, just like in the deep sea, but made by the heat from an impact.”
Evidence from Impact Craters
To understand how these environments might support life, she reviewed studies of three impact sites from different periods in Earth’s history. These include the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, formed about 65 million years ago; the Haughton crater in the Canadian Arctic, formed about 31 million years ago; and Lonar Lake in India, created about 50,000 years ago and still containing water today.
Such systems can remain active for thousands to tens of thousands of years, giving simple chemical compounds time to evolve into more complex forms that could lead to life.
Researchers suggest these environments may have been especially important on early Earth, when asteroid impacts were far more frequent. Events typically viewed as destructive may also have created the right conditions for life to begin.
The idea builds on decades of work on deep-sea vents while expanding the search for life’s origins into new environments.
Lutz contributed to early exploration of these systems decades ago. As a postdoctoral researcher, he joined some of the first expeditions to study hydrothermal vents and traveled more than a mile below the ocean surface in the submersible Alvin, where he observed thriving ecosystems in complete darkness.
These dives helped establish a new field of research and reshaped scientific understanding of how life can exist without sunlight.
“We have talked for many years about the possibility that life may have originated at deep-sea hydrothermal vents,” Lutz said.
Implications Beyond Earth
Cinquemani’s work combines these established ideas with newer evidence suggesting that impact-driven systems could also support the chemical processes needed for life.
The findings also have implications beyond Earth. Hydrothermal activity is believed to exist beneath the icy surfaces of moons such as Europa and Enceladus, and may have occurred in ancient impact craters on Mars. If similar environments on Earth can support life-forming chemistry, they could guide future searches for life elsewhere.
For Cinquemani, the research is fueled by curiosity.
“Humans are insanely curious beings,” said Cinquemani, who works as a technician at Rutgers’ New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center in Cape May, N.J., where she supports aquaculture research while preparing to pursue advanced study in marine science. “We question everything. We may never know exactly how we began, but we can try our best to understand how things might have occurred.”
Reference: “Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent and Impact-Generated Hydrothermal Vent Systems: Insights into the Origin of Life” by Shea M. Cinquemani and Richard A. Lutz, 2 March 2026, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
DOI: 10.3390/jmse14050486
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