Current star formation requires ‘some’ amount of heavier elements. However you need stars to create these heavier elements. This leads to the problem which came first, the first stars or the first heavier elements. One theory is that since ‘dark matter’ is about 90% of the matter in the universe maybe there were originally ‘dark stars’ made out of dark matter and these stars were far larger than any stars today. These stars would have exploded after very short lives of only thousands of years and because they were so large their supernovae may have created the first heavier elements of matter needed for the current star formation process that is currently in our universe.

(The Great Courses – The Life and Death of Stars)