Country roads revisited - life is old there..OLDER than the mountains...

[burkhard]

according to this new, but heavily disputed research on how old
complex life on Earth is

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3geyvpxpeyo

[Ernest Major]

Post by burkhard
according to this new, but heavily disputed research on how old
complex life on Earth is
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3geyvpxpeyo

The first publication on this (the Francevillian Biota or Gabonionta)
was in Nature in 2010. I presume that this is El Albani et al (2010) in
the references, but they've not only paywalled the bulk of the paper,
but also most of the references.

(I remembered seeing the Wikipedia article on this some time back.)

[RonO]

Post by burkhard
according to this new, but heavily disputed research on how old
complex life on Earth is
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3geyvpxpeyo

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.16249

This paper indicates that aerobic photosynthesis may have evolved a
billion years before the great Oxidation event 2.3 billion years ago
(could have evolved over 3 billion years ago). It looks like anoxygenic
photosynthesis evolved first and the Oxigenic photosystem cores evolved
from anoxygenic cores. A recent paper that I put up indicated that
cyanobacteria evolved nitrogen fixation before they evolved oxygenic
photosynthesis. This means that it was an uphill climb for oxigenic
photosynthesis when vital systems needed anaerobic conditions to
function. Chemotrophes are anaerobic, so oxygen was poison to lifeforms
when oxygenic photosynthesis evolved, even to the cyanobacteria that
evolved the system. Anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria still exist in
oxygen poor environments.

The fact that all life was adapted to anaerobic conditions could have
delayed the great oxidation event for a billion years. No one wanted
oxydative phototrophes for neighbors, not even the oxidative
phototrophes that fixed nitrogen that had to deal with self inflicted
oxygen generation.

Ron Okimoto