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Single Microbe May Have Triggered the "Great Dying"
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Medical Daily about a new theory for what triggered the
"Great Dying: " "Researchers believe that they may finally know why the event occurred, but the theory is not without controversy. There are several theories, including the possibility of a meteorite hitting the planet. Previously, most researchers believed that the Permian mass extinction was a result of a series of volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. ... However, Daniel Rothman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is floating around a different theory. As he presented in a meeting for the American Geophysical Union, he believes that the mass extinction could have been caused by something much smaller. His theory is that the extinction was caused by a single strain of bacteria."
But where's the Earth shattering kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom!
He remarked in one of his essays that people completely misunderstand evolution, using teleological thinking to believe that we are in some way the "highest form" or "goal" of evolution. But in fact, in terms of biomass and effects on the Earth's ecosystems, we are still living in the Age of Bacteria.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
it's how you mass-extinct with it.
And thinking about the importance of a phylum in terms of its biomass is nothing to do with whether a biologist is American or not - it tells you the significance of that phylum in food chains. What does the AC above think the krill eat? They eat plankton. Now tell me, which is there more of? Krill or plankton? And what do plankton do? They use sunlight and nutrients (largely recycled by bacteria from decaying matter), or they use bacteria directly.
How does organic matter in the soil get broken down into a form that plants can use? Fungi and bacteria. Without plants, there would be only a few people living on the sea coasts.
Read Jay Gould. Then read some of the many books he recommends. You will then be able to make more intelligent posts on these subjects.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Cofactor F430
Forget the organism. This is about the advent of a novel reaction pathway, that scales on the availability of nickel. Surprisingly, geology might have something to say on that score. Any vigorous reaction pathway that bubbles madly away at an oceanic scale is almost certain to colour the infrared signature of our thin gas membrane. Imagine if everyone on the planet had an F430.
There's a lot to like about this hypothesis. I've seen worse. To determine exactly how this pathway becomes prolific at global scale would take decades of further study. It's as yet a humble beginning, of the kind that sometimes pans out.
> The headline made me think that this guy somehow had it narrowed down to one actual organism.
That is difficult to envision, Chuck Norris was born so much later.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
If this is correct it is the second time an organism has wiped out most existing life forms The Great Oxygenation Event is thought to have killed most existing forms of life - then single-celled organisms. It makes you wonder, could it happen again - a bacteria completely changing Earth's chemistry in a way that's incompatible with most existing life forms?
He doesn't need to - ecosystems adapt to him.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."