[BipolarBob]

The planet's surface was at first molten

That alone would have sterilized any trace of life.

[Go_Raiders]

Wow, you may have just proven that there was no life on Earth before there was life on Earth. Sounds like a Nobel Prize may be in the cards for you.

[rarestia]

That alone would have sterilized any trace of life.

Panspermia fills in a lot of gaps but isn't generally accepted as a theory. The idea is that the ingredients for life existed on asteroids and meteors that hit the Earth during those formative years. There's a case that bombardment from common rocks in our early solar system could mean that the same types of life existed on Mars and Venus early on but Earth was the only planet in the zone where habitable life could thrive.

It would certainly be interesting to find life forms on Mars, even fossils, that indicate life once existed and was similar if not identical to early life forms on Earth.