Scientists Decipher 3-Billion-Year-Old Genomic Fossils

hnkstrprnkstr writes "MIT scientists have created a sort of genomic fossil (abstract) that shows the collective genome of all life underwent an enormous expansion about 3 billion years ago, which they're calling the Archean Expansion. Many of the new genes appearing in the Archean Expansion are oxygen related, and could be the first biological evidence of the Great Oxidation Event, the period in Earth's history when oxygen became so plentiful that many anaerobic life forms may have become extinct."

Comments

Re:Wait, what?

[garyisabusyguy]

really, creationism is the 'elephant in the room' whenever you start talking about the fossil record

what I find interesting about the article is the layering effect of life. how the anerobic life got pushed out by the oxygen breathers and relegated to living in the cracks. good for us, but an extinction event for them. there have been many big extinctions, and each allowed some hardier form of live to make it to the next expansion. we are in a current extinction event (holocene), and have started to worry about an asteroid or some such wiping us out.

even that worry over our own 'extinction' bumps up against any number of religious beliefs, even if they seem to have an unrealistic timescale of tens of years, when any historical events have been separated by millions of years

so, gimmee something here, how do you discuss geologic events when people seem so driven to think in terms of their own lifespans?