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Life is inevitable given conditions where water is a liquid. It only needs time if all the necessary atomic elements are present. What morphology it would take is the only unpredictable thing. It would still follow the basic forms of fractals ie bifurcation and self similarity. Complex animals as a first approximation are a tube with a mouth at one end and an anus at the other. You cannot have complex animals in a two dimensional world as they would simply fall in half. What appendages develop again is purely by chance. But the equivalent of legs eyes noses ears etc will inevitably uccur.
Do a google on 'homeoboxes'. The same sequences of DNA in flies and humans govern the development of legs arms etc.
We do have 'alien' life to study. Bacteria that live in solid granite and the life around deep sea vents. The bacteria that use Arsenic in the place of Phosphorus in their DNA and ATP are another example. The extremophiles also show what is possible in what we consider as conditions to extreme for life. I will not mention the snoticles.
Bert
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