https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 “Dissolving the Fermi paradox”.
The Drake equation gives an estimate for the number of technological civil actions to ever arise, by multiplying a number of parameters. Many of these parameters are unknown, and reasonable estimates range over many orders of magnitude. This paper takes defensible ranges for these parameters from the literature, and shows that if they are all small, but reasonable, we are the only technological civilization in the universe.
Earth was not eaten by aliens or an AGI in the past, nor do we see them in the sky, so we are probably alone. (Or else interstellar expansion is impossible, for some reason. But that seems unlikely.)
You might want to look at”The major transitions in life revisited.” That’s a book from 2011 that looks at what has been learned in the field since the publication of the original in 1995. I know that we know far more about eukaryogenesis than we did then. Also, there are better models of the RNA world than either stochastic correction or Eigen’s hypercycles. That is, models which can explain the ability of life to become complex in an environment of inaccurate replication and free riders. If that book isn’t enough to get you more up to date, email carlf at abinitio dot com and I’ll shoot you some references.