Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Penn State: Window to the past: New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex life [View all]
Window to the past: New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex lifeNOVEMBER 7, 2023 By Matthew Carroll
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Microfossils from Western Australia may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, according to an international team of scientists.
The findings, published in the journal Geobiology, provide a rare window into the Great Oxidation Event, a time roughly 2.4 billion years ago when the oxygen concentration increased on Earth, fundamentally changing the planet’s surface. The event is thought to have triggered a mass extinction and opened the door for the development of more complex life, but little direct evidence had existed in the fossil record before the discovery of the new microfossils, the scientists said.
“What we show is the first direct evidence linking the changing environment during the Great Oxidation Event with an increase in the complexity of life,” said corresponding author Erica Barlow, an affiliate research professor in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State. “This is something that’s been hypothesized, but there’s just such little fossil record that we haven’t been able to test it.”
When compared to modern organisms, the microfossils more closely resembled a type of algae than simpler prokaryotic life — organisms like bacteria, for example — that existed prior to the Great Oxidation Event, the scientists said. Algae, along with all other plants and animals, are eukaryotes, more complex life whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus.
…
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Microfossils from Western Australia may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, according to an international team of scientists.
The findings, published in the journal Geobiology, provide a rare window into the Great Oxidation Event, a time roughly 2.4 billion years ago when the oxygen concentration increased on Earth, fundamentally changing the planet’s surface. The event is thought to have triggered a mass extinction and opened the door for the development of more complex life, but little direct evidence had existed in the fossil record before the discovery of the new microfossils, the scientists said.
“What we show is the first direct evidence linking the changing environment during the Great Oxidation Event with an increase in the complexity of life,” said corresponding author Erica Barlow, an affiliate research professor in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State. “This is something that’s been hypothesized, but there’s just such little fossil record that we haven’t been able to test it.”
When compared to modern organisms, the microfossils more closely resembled a type of algae than simpler prokaryotic life — organisms like bacteria, for example — that existed prior to the Great Oxidation Event, the scientists said. Algae, along with all other plants and animals, are eukaryotes, more complex life whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus.
…
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read