One of the phototrophs used in the experiment was Chlorella vulgaris. Credit: Charles University in Prague The dinoflagellate Prorocentrum micans was used in the experiment because it has mixotrophic behavior. Credit: C. Tomas/UNCW
Posted on 09/14/2009 1:00:22 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A dinosaur-killing asteroid may have wiped out much of life on Earth 65 million years ago, but now scientists have discovered how smaller organisms might have survived in the darkness following such a catastrophic impact. Survival may have depended upon jack-of-all-trades organisms called mixotrophs that can consume organic matter in the absence of sunlight. That would have proved crucial during the long months of dust and debris blotting out the sun, when plenty of dead or dying organic matter filled the Earth's oceans and lakes...
Jones and her colleagues tested the limits of mixotrophs by subjecting them to six months of low light or complete darkness. The mixotrophs not only thrived, but also surprised researchers by helping sunlight-dependent organisms also survive pitch black conditions.
Scientists have long debated the overall impact of the K-T extinction that may have heralded the end of the dinosaurs, but most researchers agree that such an event would have thrown up enough dust and debris to darken Earth's skies for about six months. A lack of sunlight would have killed off a majority of plants, eliminating the food supply for animals higher up the food chain.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
One of the phototrophs used in the experiment was Chlorella vulgaris. Credit: Charles University in Prague The dinoflagellate Prorocentrum micans was used in the experiment because it has mixotrophic behavior. Credit: C. Tomas/UNCW
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Single-celled bomb shelters?
I really have my doubts that the asteroid impact was anything more than the final straw for the dinosaurs. Too many of the smaller more delicate critters did survive.
What I want to know is how many of those astroids gave us the life forms that we find in recent samples of “outer space?”
How do we know that WE are not the “aliens?”
:’) It was the final straw — and it was also the first through final minus one straw. The surviving species were exactly the kinds which would (and did) survive the K-T impact event. The dinos were *not* in decline as a taxa prior to the event. There’s a massive resistance to the impact mass extinction model, and will continue to be, from the Darwin diehards; and there’s a massive resistance to it from the YECs.
Klaatu barada nikto. I mean, shhh.
A COOKbook????
*thunk*
“How do we know that WE are not the “aliens?””
Because there are animals existant today -— with whom we share great genetic similarlity -— that are clearly present in the fossil record.
If we are “aliens” we came at a single-cell level.
Squatters rights after the first billion years.
We KNOW that? Or do we just “assume” that?
Did we come here in one piece? Did we evolve? Were we created?
(But don’t get me started!!)
I have no interest in the evolve/created debate.
But there are creatures that are extremely old (roaches, snails, whatever) from the earliest of fossil records that exists today.
Large portions of the genome of these “clearly original” creatures is similar to current day human DNA.
Heck, there is “junk” DNA in corn and other plants that tracks human DNA just fine.
So, regardless of the “evolve” or “create” camp, we’re as native as the rest of the stuff on this planet.
I don’t do “evolve or create” either...just trying to get a fix on views.
(The “argument” is like the chicken and the egg...never ending.)
Gee whiz, for a moment there, I thought that said “How Orgasms Survived Asteroid Impacts.”
Large portions of the genome of these “clearly original” creatures is similar to current day human DNA.
If true, the implications are mind boggling.
Okay, but you really need to get out more... ;’)
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