The one that gets me personally is
We cannot say much about this for sure. It is at the very limits of what we can learn about and infer. But prior to the Earth being âthe oxygen planetâ we know that it was home to life, and that its native microbes metabolised lots of fascinating compounds and had a rich culture (ha!).
When the Cyanobacteria gained a foothold and started pumping out oxygen as a byproduct of their metabolic processes, they changed the game. They werenât the only thing that changed the atmosphere, but they were one of the things that opened up a crack, exploited it, and can be observed today: one of the few things we can follow back to this time-before-fossils. Cyanobacteria were part culprit, part prophet. The oxygenated atmosphere opened up new opportunities for the ancestors of modern plants and animals - the Eukaryotes, the domain of Fortunate Cellular Nuclei, who evolved specifically in adaptation to the Oxygen Planet. Some theories, which may or may not be true, circle around the idea that the extraordinarily complex cellular structure of eukaryotes is because various unrelated organisms came together under one cellular mantle to protect them from oxygen, and their symbiosis led to them becoming one âorganism.â We know that our mitochondria have different DNA, and that their processes are different from ours; we expect (we cannot know) that they possibly came under the cellular roof to shelter from the apocalypse of oxygen. The nuclei, also, who are so Fortunate, may have been someone else first.
Pretty much every statement Iâve made there has several question marks and a long string of competing citations behind it. There is a lot we cannot know.
There are some things we can know: All of our works and kinships we owe to oxygen. This was not always a planet of oxygen. There was an abundance of life before it. We can find remnants of the other forms today. We can find cousins of the old life-forms in remote places. Fields such as astrobiology look to Antarctica or thermal vents for microorganisms that eat iron or live on acid.
I just like to think about it and the different stories you can make from it.
There was a terrible change and everything died except these small remnants. There are no other planets like ours now.
When the oxygen came it was poison to us. something came after us. But it was not us.
There was once a terrible catastrophe at the very edge of imagination, at the very limits of what we can find out, and the sky changed: so our family held each other and hid for so long that we became Fortunate.
It just gets me! The oxygen extinction!!!!!!!!
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
izzy806
titsay
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
annaxmalina
gummygunk
ellievsbear
