Paper 58 Overview: Life Establishment on Urantia

Paper 58 outlines the establishment of life on Urantia, detailing how the Life Carriers implemented their unique, experimental life patterns in three simultaneous marine-life implantations approximately 550 million years ago. The paper meticulously chronicles the physical prerequisites necessary for life implantation, including the development of sufficient ocean salinity, appropriate atmospheric conditions, and the stabilization of continental landmasses. It emphasizes that Urantia is one of only sixty-one decimal planets in the Satania system where experimental life modifications are permitted.

The narrative progresses chronologically through the geophysical preparation of the planet, the dawn of primitive marine vegetation, continental drift processes, the critical transition from vegetable to animal life forms, and the preservation of this evolutionary record in stratified fossil-bearing rock formations. Throughout the account, the Life Carrier author highlights the purposeful design behind earth's life patterns, asserting that while evolution proceeded through natural mechanisms, the appearance of new species occurred through sudden genetic modifications rather than gradual changes. The paper concludes by describing how the ancient geological record preserves evidence of these earliest life stages, particularly in formations around Lake Superior and the Grand Canyon.

In all Satania, there are only sixty-one worlds similar to Urantia, life-modification planets. The majority of inhabited worlds are peopled in accordance with established techniques; on such spheres, the Life Carriers are afforded little leeway in their plans for life implantation. But about one world in ten is designated as a decimal planet and assigned to the special registry of the Life Carriers; and on such planets, we are permitted to undertake certain life experiments in an effort to modify or possibly improve the standard universe types of living beings.

Six hundred million years ago, a commission of Life Carriers dispatched from Jerusem arrived on Urantia to initiate their 606th experience with Nebadon life patterns in the Satania system. This mission represented their sixtieth opportunity to modify the standard life designs of the local universe, marking Urantia as a designated experimental world. The Life Carriers operated under strict constraints, unable to initiate life until planetary conditions reached appropriate maturity for evolutionary cycles, and unable to accelerate development beyond what the planet's physical progress could support.

The Satania Life Carriers had projected a sodium chloride pattern of life, necessitating sufficient oceanic salinity before implementation could proceed. This salt-solution requirement remains fundamental to all Urantian life forms, as even the most complex land animals depend on this same essential solution circulating throughout their bodies via the bloodstream. After determining that Urantia was evolving toward conditions favorable for marine life, the Life Carriers temporarily returned to Jerusem, preferring to await further continental fragmentation that would create more inland seas and sheltered bays—ideal environments for initial life implantation. These shallow ancient seas, rarely exceeding six hundred feet in depth with sunlight penetration throughout, eventually provided the perfect nursery for primitive plant life to migrate onto land, where the carbon-rich atmosphere facilitated rapid growth despite being inhospitable to animal life.

The planetary atmosphere filters approximately one two-billionth of the sun's total light emanation through to earth's surface, along with numerous other forms of solar energy beyond the visible spectrum. Were this energy quantified economically, North America's annual sunlight "bill" would exceed 800 quadrillion dollars, with a city like Chicago receiving solar energy worth over 100 million dollars daily. This continuous influx of energy across multiple wavelengths, both within and beyond human visual perception, constitutes a critical component of the planetary life-support system.

The atmosphere's protective functions include a remarkable ozone layer located about ten miles above earth's surface, extending spaceward for another ten miles. Though this ozone concentration would measure a mere one-tenth of an inch thick at surface conditions, it effectively absorbs dangerous ultraviolet radiation while permitting beneficial rays to reach the planet. This precise balance of filtration, neither too restrictive nor too permissive, exemplifies the numerous seemingly coincidental protective systems that facilitate life on Urantia. The Urantia midwayers have documented over fifty thousand facts of physics and chemistry, along with more than one hundred thousand findings outside these domains, that they contend demonstrate intelligent purpose rather than accidental chance in the material creation.

The complex atmospheric structure exhibits distinct layers with specialized functions: the troposphere (lower five to six miles) containing weather phenomena; the inner ionosphere; and the stratosphere, where temperature remains consistently between 65 and 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit for approximately forty miles of altitude. Beyond this zone, temperatures rise dramatically, reaching 1200°F at auroral display elevations, where oxygen ionization occurs. These auroral phenomena correlate directly with sunspot activity—solar cyclones that function as enormous magnets, hurling charged particles toward earth and influencing terrestrial magnetic fields. This sophisticated atmospheric architecture not only protects surface life but also facilitates long-distance radio transmission through the conductive properties of the superstratospheric layers.

During early universe materialization, space regions contained vast hydrogen clouds similar to the astronomic dust clusters currently observable in remote cosmic locations. These primordial nebulae served as the foundation for matter organization, though under certain unusual conditions, they also facilitated atom disruption processes. These cosmic laboratories generated flood tides of short space rays—a form of radiant energy currently unknown on Urantia but carrying energy charges four hundred times greater than other radiant energy types in organized space domains.

The emission of these short space rays varies according to numerous cosmic occurrences, including fluctuations in temperature, gravity, and electronic pressures. The vast hydrogen clouds function as comprehensive cosmic chemical laboratories, harboring all phases of evolving energy and metamorphosing matter. Energy actions intensify where the marginal gases of binary stars overlap and commingle, creating unique conditions for material transformation. Despite the intensity and ubiquity of these energy currents in space, they exert no influence on the evolutionary processes of organized life—the implanted life patterns of the Life Carriers were specifically designed with complete resistance to this flood of short space rays.

All these essential cosmic conditions required proper evolution before the Life Carriers could initiate their work on Urantia. The intricate interplay between spatial energy, planetary development, and atmospheric formation created the foundation necessary for the specific form of life designed for this experimental world. This preparatory phase demonstrates the carefully orchestrated sequence of physical development that precedes biological implantation in the universe scheme.

The Life Carriers emphasize the unique origins of Urantia's life forms, clarifying that while they transported and established life on the planet, they did not import it from elsewhere. The life patterns on Urantia were formulated specifically for this world, making them distinct from all other planets in the Satania system and throughout Nebadon. Five hundred and fifty million years ago, the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia and, in cooperation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces, organized and initiated the original life patterns in three simultaneous marine-life implantations strategically located in what they designated as the central or Eurasian-African, eastern or Australasian, and western (Greenland and the Americas) regions.

By five hundred million years ago, primitive marine vegetable life had become well established across the planet as continental drift began to separate the land masses. Greenland and the arctic land mass, together with North and South America, commenced their westward migration, while Africa shifted slightly southward, creating the Mediterranean basin between itself and the mother land body. Antarctica, Australia, and the land indicated by the islands of the Pacific broke away in southern and eastern directions. The Life Carriers had anticipated this continental separation in their implantation strategy, deliberately placing life in sheltered tropical bays along the east-west cleavage of the breaking continental land mass to ensure that each emerging continent would carry this life with it in its warm-water seas, thereby facilitating global dispersal despite the eventual formation of separating oceans.

The progressive continental land drift occurred as earth's internal structure evolved into its current configuration. The planet's core, comparable to steel in density and rigidity, experiences pressure approaching 25,000 tons per square inch, generating intense heat that increases with depth until reaching temperatures slightly exceeding that of the sun's surface. The outer thousand miles of earth's mass consists primarily of various rock types, while denser and heavier metallic elements concentrated beneath during the planet's molten pre-atmospheric phase, with surface metals representing primarily volcanic extrusion, lava flows, and meteoric deposits.

The earth's forty-mile-thick outer crust rests upon a molten sea of basalt that flows to equalize shifting planetary pressures, thus stabilizing the surface and preventing more catastrophic seismic activity. The continents, composed largely of granite with a density less than three times that of water, float upon the denser oceanic basalt, which weighs approximately five and one-half times more than water. This weight differential, approximately 20,000 pounds per square inch for continental masses versus 5,000 pounds for ocean floor water pressure, creates the differential pressures that drive continental movement toward the ocean beds. The depression of the Pacific Ocean floor during pre-life ages particularly influenced this process, upthrusting the continental land mass while the ocean bed engaged in compensatory sinking adjustments, establishing the fundamental pattern of tectonic activity that continues to reshape earth's surface.

Four hundred and fifty million years ago, a pivotal metamorphosis occurred as life transitioned from vegetable to animal forms in the sheltered tropical bays and lagoons along the extensive shorelines of the separating continents. This evolutionary progression unfolded through numerous transitional stages that connected primitive vegetable life to more defined animal organisms. Evidence of this transitional phase persists today in certain slime molds that defy clear categorization as either plants or animals, illustrating the gradient between kingdoms. Despite these transitional forms, the animal kingdom exhibits distinct divisions that are not connected by evolutionary "missing links," as these intermediate forms never existed.

The emergence of new species and diversified orders of living organisms occurred not through gradual accumulation of small variations but through sudden appearances of new forms—a process that was entirely biologic and natural without supernatural intervention. As the oceans contracted and salt concentration increased, marine organisms evolved sophisticated mechanisms to regulate their internal salt content, demonstrating the ongoing adaptation processes that characterize evolutionary development. These physiological and anatomic adjustments represent responses to physical laws, while the subsequent endowment of mind resulted from the bestowal of adjutant mind-spirits according to innate brain capacity. Throughout endless cycles of gains and losses, adjustments and readjustments, only those organisms that attained cosmic unity persisted, while those falling short disappeared, illustrating the fundamental principle of evolutionary selection.

The vast rock systems constituting earth's outer crust during the life-dawn or Proterozoic era now appear at relatively few surface locations, and when they do emerge from beneath later deposits, they contain only fossilized remains of primitive vegetable and early animal life. These ancient water-deposited rocks sometimes intermingle with subsequent layers, yielding fossils of early vegetable life and occasionally primitive marine-animal organisms. The earliest stratified rock layers, averaging about one and one-half miles in thickness but sometimes extending to four miles, contain algae, coral-like plants, primitive Protozoa, and transitional sponge-like organisms, though the absence of fossils in certain early layers does not necessarily indicate life's absence during their formation.

These primordial rock strata are particularly accessible in eastern, central, and northern Canada, with intermittent ridges extending from Pennsylvania and the ancient Adirondack Mountains westward through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and additional formations running from Newfoundland to Alabama and Alaska to Mexico. The Lake Superior region and the Grand Canyon offer exceptional exposures where these primitive fossil-bearing rocks testify to ancient upheavals and surface fluctuations. Particularly noteworthy is the St. Croix valley of Wisconsin, which displays evidence of 127 successive lava flows followed by water submergence and sedimentary deposition. These geological records document how early shallow seas gradually filled with vegetation while shoreline waters teemed with simple animal forms, beginning the unbroken biological progression that continues to the present day. As one poet aptly observed, "The dust we tread upon was once alive," encapsulating the profound continuity preserved in earth's geological "stone book."