The context for the emergence of Earth is a big puzzle as well as the definition of life itself. Here I report evidence that some terrestrial minerals and meteorites containing iron catalyzing inorganic and organic reactions generating Micro-Metallorganic-Magnetic-Materials (M4) able to perform non-enzymatic catalytic activities typical of modern life. Complexity, chemical composition, interactions with some mineral and/or rocks leave open the possibility that M4 materials might represent a kind of non conventional form of protometabolic complex chemical system from which the ancestors of the first living cells could have evolved on Earth
