Scientists from the University of Southern Denmark are proposing that we reconsider how complex life actually evolved on earth.
Oxygen is considered one of the main ingredients in the biological soup that helped to fuel evolution of complex life on Earth.* However, a team of scientists from the University of Southern Denmark is thinking that oxygen is not as a major of a player in how Earth-bound life forms came to be.
In their studies, they found that Halichondria panicea, a type of sea sponge, was able to grow in extremely low oxygen concentration.
“When we placed the sponges in our lab, they continued to breathe and grow even when the oxygen levels reached 0.5 percent of present day atmospheric levels,” said Daniel Mills, PhD at the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution.
For millions of years, life on earth consisted of simple, single-celled, organisms that were nowhere near the level of complexities of the type of life that we see today.* One would think that there would have had to be a dramatic change in environmental factors for these simpletons to evolve into something more complex.
Although the rise in oxygen level is considered as one of the main catalysts for evolution on earth, there exists quite a few life forms on Earth that don’t require oxygen at all to survive.* One such group is the obligate anaerobe known as sulfate reducers, which utilizes sulfate gas in place of oxygen.
Oxygen, in combination, with other elements and molecules are crucial for most complex life forms on earth.* Although sea sponges are multi-cellular animals, they are still extremely simple in regards to their biological makeup.* One could consider Mill’s research of the sponge to be an essential link between simple and complex life on Earth.
Source: phys
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