This topic was posted , thanks JimSEA.
Posted on 10/20/2016 11:51:04 AM PDT by JimSEA
DENVER — Life on Earth got into the shell game more than 200 million years earlier than previously thought.
Fossilized eukaryotes — complex life-forms that include animals and plants — discovered in Canada are decked out in armorlike layers of mineral plates, paleobiologist Phoebe Cohen said September 27 at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. At about 809 million years old, the find is the oldest evidence of organisms controlling the formation of minerals, a process called biomineralization.
********* The mineral plates themselves are odd. Most modern microbes make shells out of calcium carbonate, but the ancient shells are made of calcium phosphate, the same crystal used in human teeth enamel. Today, phosphate is limited in the environment and most microbes avoid wasting it.
That may not have been as much of an issue in the marine basin where the eukaryotes lived, the researchers found. Analysis of rocks surrounding the fossils indicate that the amount of oxygen in the waters where the eukaryotes lived was inconsistent. Fluctuating oxygen levels pulled phosphate from underlying sediment into the water, where it was available for mineral making. These favorable conditions plus the need for protection from predation (SN: 11/28/15, p. 13) probably drove the first evolution of biomineralization, Cohen said. Eventually the environment changed, and these shell-making species died out.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
>> Today, phosphate is limited in the environment and most microbes avoid wasting it. <<
Time to get busy washing dishes with old-school detergents!
Caused by evil Republican eukaryotes!
And here I thought Oil was the evidence of shell making and decaying.
There's some truth there. I was talking to a microbe just yesterday and it was all "Reduce, reuse, recycle, dude!"
Don’t eu call me a karyote!
Alright but I hope it’s still OK to call you alert.
America needs more lerts!
Science deals with observations and facts not deities.
This topic was posted , thanks JimSEA.
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