[alextheparrot]

Couldn’t one take the view point that the formation of a transient ribosome could have created the conditions to solve replication?

This route would be much more of a dance than what you’ve implied. A transient ribosome makes a protein-based RNA replicase, replicase copies all local the RNAs including the RNA ribosomes. This process would eventually result in a large number of ribosome RNAs and replicase proteins without the need to have a “perfected process” prior to either step.

The whole process would be much messier than what we see today after millions of years of refinement, of course. The stability of an arbitrary RNA polymer is also increased by the presumed lack of RNases as well.

It has been a few years since I took a grad course covering the ribosome, so excuse my lack of currentness if new research has discounted this.