An Animal That Lives Without Oxygen

Julie188 writes "Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above."

Comments

Strange

[Pojut]

I find it odd that the article mentions absolutely NOTHING about the implications of this discovery as it pertains to life on other planets.

The naivety of mankind

[assemblerex]

To think that all life needs oxygen or even a sun to exist goes back to our belief that the earth is the center of the universe.In reality we are a blip on the map.

Re:Been there...done that!

[milgram]

I think this might be more in line with an organism that doesn't use O2, rather than one that does but can exist for periods of time without it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen

Re:Unsurprising

[ElectricTurtle]

This has interesting implications for biosphere models during and before the Oxygen Catastrophe of the Siderian period. It also reveals an alternative evolutionary path which with these exceptions was otherwise prevented by those events. It fundamentally changes the possibilities of pre-Siderian life.

Re:Been there...done that!

[ElectricTurtle]

You're ignoring the huge, huge chasm between unicellular and multicellular organisms, one which was not bridged by evolutionary processes for over 3 billion years by most estimates. It was previously thought that multicellular life without an oxygen-based metabolism was impossible, because previous models of microorganism evolution pegged multicellular development to a point after the Oxygen Catastrophe of the Siderian period. This discovery may lead to wholesale revision of models of microorganism evolution over geologic time.