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> The early history of life on earth is an assortment of dead ends out competed by the few who emerged from the primordial soup that beat the less fit forms for

> The early history of life on earth is an assortment of dead ends out competed by the few who emerged from the primordial soup that beat the less fit forms for finite resources. I’m not sure how true that is, and reflects a somewhat older view. There was a lot of cooperation involved, particularly in regards to symbiogensis, which the older generation still opposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis > In her 1981 work Symbiosis in Cell Evolution [Margulis] argued that eukaryotic cells originated as communities of interacting entities, including endosymbiotic spirochaetes that developed into eukaryotic flagella and cilia. This last idea has not received much acceptance, because flagella lack DNA and do not show ultrastructural similarities to bacteria or to archaea (see also: Evolution of flagella and Prokaryotic cytoskeleton). According to Margulis and Dorion Sagan, "Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking"…

asdff 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event This is what I am talking about. This perhaps predates even symbiogenesis or perhaps drove it. Anaerobic lineages died out in the oxygen rich environment that the first forms of photosynthetic life created. Cellular respiration using oxygen, as animals do, probably evolved after the atmosphere was already oxygen rich. There is a huge fitness advantage if you cannot make use of light energy, but can absorb cells that can and maintain them as photosynthetic eukaryotes do today through symbiosis of the cyanobacteria that became cloroplasts. What I like about this example are the parallels to modern times. The great oxidation event was an extinction event brought on not by external factors, but by a life form producing gas that changes the composition of the atmosphere and leads to dramatic effects across the planet. Not unlike us humans today with our CO2 production.

asdff 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event This is what I am talking about. This perhaps predates even symbiogenesis or perhaps drove it. Anaerobic lineages died out in the oxygen rich environment that the first forms of photosynthetic life created. Cellular respiration using oxygen, as animals do, probably evolved after the atmosphere was already oxygen rich. There is a huge fitness advantage if you cannot make use of light energy, but can absorb cells that can and maintain them as photosynthetic eukaryotes do today through symbiosis of the cyanobacteria that became cloroplasts. What I like about this example are the parallels to modern times. The great oxidation event was an extinction event brought on not by external factors, but by a life form producing gas that changes the composition of the atmosphere and leads to dramatic effects across the planet. Not unlike us humans today with our CO2 production.