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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."

6 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. There is no Mediterranean Ocean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is no Mediterranean Ocean. There is however a Mediterranean Sea.

  2. The naivety of mankind by assemblerex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Strange by srmalloy · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are other articles with more coverage -- Live Science, BMC Biology (PDF of 20-page article with pictures available), New Scientist, Nature, and others. The provisional PDF available at BMC Biology is the full article as it was accepted, and details the experimental procedure that confirmed that these were completely anaerobic organisms.

  4. Re:Been there...done that! by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
  5. Re:Been there...done that! by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    The key part is multicellular. As in what your brain isn't.

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    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  6. Re:Strange by Jello+B. · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ha ha ha, the phrase "french fries" was at one point replaced with the phrase "freedom fries" and you referenced this in your comment. Your wit astounds me.