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Chimneys of creation? (Image: Courtesy of University of Washington)

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ENDINGS are also beginnings. The break-up of continents may have allowed life to emerge on Earth.

Frieder Klein of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and his team found fossilised microbes in rock 760 metres below the sea floor off Portugal, dating back to when the supercontinent Pangaea broke up 125 million years ago.

Pangaea鈥檚 break-up allowed mixing of ocean water and hydrothermal fluids beneath the sea floor, creating conditions that can support life (PNAS, ).

The same conditions would have existed on Earth as far back as the origins of life, and may exist elsewhere in solar system, such as on Jupiter鈥檚 moon Europa.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淏reak-ups give life rocky start it needs鈥�