https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250516134402.htm

"An international team of scientists have unlocked a key piece of Earth's evolutionary puzzle by decoding the structure of a light-harvesting "nanodevice" in one of the planet's most ancient lineages of cyanobacteria. The discovery, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides an unprecedented glimpse into how early life harnessed sunlight to produce oxygen -- a process that transformed our planet forever.

"The team, including Dr Tanai Cardona from Queen Mary University of London, focused on Photosystem I (PSI), a molecular complex that converts light into electrical energy, purified from Anthocerotibacter panamensis -- a recently discovered species representing a lineage that diverged from all other cyanobacteria roughly 3 billion years ago.

"Remarkably, this living relic shares almost no close relatives, with its nearest known evolutionary "sister" species parting ways some 1.4 billion years ago.

***

"Most cyanobacteria, plus all algae and plants, pack their photosynthetic machinery into stacked membrane sheets called thylakoids: imagine several layers of solar panels.

"A. panamensis lacks thylakoids, confining its entire photosynthetic toolkit to a single membrane layer.

"That restriction limits photosynthesis, so these thylakoid-less cyanobacteria grow slowly and tolerate only dim light in the lab.

"'With this PSI structure in hand," added co-author Dr Christopher Gisriel from University of Wisconsin-Madison, "We can compare it to others and see which features are ancient and which are recent evolutionary innovations."

***

"Dr Tanai Cardona concluded, "Even three billion years ago, photosynthesis appears to have reached a remarkable degree of sophistication. To find the true origin of oxygen-producing photosynthesis, we'll have to look even further back -- before cyanobacteria themselves evolved.'"

Comment: Why should oxygen be generated at all? The study is best understood in the teleology of a designed process planning for future use by newly evolved organisms.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bacteria-fossils-oldest-machinery-photosynthesis-th...

"Ancient tiny fossils from Australia may carry evidence of great power: the ability to make oxygen through photosynthesis.

"The fossilized bacteria, dating from 1.73 billion to 1.78 billion years ago, are chock-full of structures that resemble those where oxygen-producing photosynthesis takes place in most modern cyanobacteria and in plants. Called thylakoid membranes, the structures are the oldest ever found, researchers report January 3 in Nature. The finding pushes back the evidence of thylakoids in cyanobacteria by 1.2 billion years.

***

"Researchers already had indirect evidence from genetics and chemical studies that cyanobacteria had developed thylakoids by the time these fossilized bacteria lived, says Patricia Sanchez-Baracaldo, an evolutionary microbiologist at the University of Bristol in England. Still, exactly when the structures evolved is hotly debated. So it’s exciting to see fossil evidence of such old thylakoids, says Sanchez-Baracaldo, who was not involved in the work. “Any evidence that you have from that time period is important because the fossil record is really very sparse.”

"Some researchers think that thylakoids may have evolved before the Great Oxidation Event around 2.4 billion years ago. Prior to that event, there were whiffs of oxygen here and there in the atmosphere, but it took the concentrated action of photosynthetic bacteria to send Earth’s oxygen levels skyrocketing. Stacks of thylakoids within cyanobacteria may have multiplied the bacteria’s oxygen production.

"During the period when the now-fossilized cyanobacteria lived, oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere had plummeted again to a fraction of today’s levels, Sanchez-Baracaldo says. The fossils hint that there may have been small pockets where oxygen was abundant and could have fostered the evolution of the ancestors of plants and animals."

Comment: if oxygen dependent organism were to arise, oxygen had to come first. The very first organisms on the sea floor appeared in a highly anoxic ocean. The highly complex Cambrian forms could only appear once the oceans were oxygenated.

https://www.livescience.com/scientists-accidentally-discover-photosynthesis-doesnt-work...

"In the new study, published March 22 in the journal Nature(opens in new tab), researchers used a new technique, known as ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy, to study how photosynthesis works at a timescale of one quadrillionth of a second (0.000000000000001 second) for the first time. The team was initially trying to figure out how quinones — ring-shaped molecules that can steal electrons during chemical processes — impact photosynthesis. But instead, the researchers found that electrons could be released from photosystems much earlier during photosynthesis than scientists previously believed was possible.

***

"Two photosystems are used during photosynthesis: photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII). PSII primarily provide electrons to PSI by taking them from water molecules: PSI then further excites the electrons before releasing them to eventually be given to carbon dioxide to create sugars, via a series of complex steps.

"Past research had suggested that the protein scaffolding in PSI and PSII was very thick, which helped to contain electrons within them before being passed on to where they were needed. But the new ultrafast spectroscopy technique revealed that the protein scaffolding was more "leaky" than expected and that some electrons could escape from the photosystems almost immediately after light was absorbed by the chlorophyll within the photosystems. These electrons could therefore reach their destinations faster than expected.

***

"'Many scientists have tried to extract electrons from an earlier point in photosynthesis, but said it wasn't possible because the energy is so buried in the protein scaffold," Zhang said. "The fact that we can [potentially] steal them at an earlier process is mind-blowing.'"

Comment: Such a complex system cannot happen by chance. Design required.

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-enigmatic-bacterium-gobi-harvests.html

"Eight years ago an unusual bacterium was discovered in Lake Tian E Hu (Swan lake) in the Gobi desert. The new organism belongs to a rare bacterial genus called Gemmatimonas, and it contained bacteriochlorophyll, a pigment related to chlorophylls found in plants. Analysis of its genome by a collaboration of European and British scientists suggested that this novel bacterium conducts an ancient form of photosynthesis.

"Lead Author, Dr. Pu Qian, says, "this structural and functional study has exciting implications because it shows that G. phototrophica has independently evolved its own compact, robust, and highly effective architecture for harvesting and trapping solar energy."

***

"Their work revealed the detailed structure of the photosynthesis complex, which comprises 178 pigments bound to more than 80 protein subunits . The light harvesting subunits are arranged in two concentric rings around the reaction center which converts the absorbed light energy into an electrical charge. "The architecture of the complex is very elegant. A real masterpiece of nature," says Dr. Michal Koblizek from the Inst. of Microbiology, Czech Rep. "It has not only good structural stability, but also great light harvesting efficiency."

"Since the pigments in the outer ring have higher energy than the pigments in the center of the ring the whole arrangement serves as a funnel. The energy absorbed by the pigments at the periphery of the complex is transferred within several picoseconds down the energy gradient to the center of the complex where it is transformed into metabolic energy."

Comment: a beautiful example of design. Please look at the diagram.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210826111724.htm

"A new analysis of 2.5-billion-year-old rocks from Australia finds that volcanic eruptions may have stimulated population surges of marine microorganisms, creating the first puffs of oxygen into the atmosphere. This would change existing stories of Earth's early atmosphere, which assumed that most changes in the early atmosphere were controlled by geologic or chemical processes.

***

"In its earliest days, Earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere and few, if any, oxygen-breathing lifeforms. Earth's atmosphere became permanently oxygen-rich about 2.4 billion years ago, likely after an explosion of lifeforms that photosynthesize, transforming carbon dioxide and water into oxygen.

***

"Where there were volcanic emissions, the authors reason, there must have been lava and volcanic ash fields. And those nutrient-rich rocks would have weathered in the wind and rain, releasing phosphorus into rivers that could fertilize nearby coastal areas, allowing oxygen-producing cyanobacteria and other single-celled lifeforms to flourish.

***

"'There are other nutrients that modulate biological activity on short timescales, but phosphorus is the one that is most important on long timescales," Meixnerová said.

"Today, phosphorus is plentiful in biological material and in agricultural fertilizer. But in very ancient times, weathering of volcanic rocks would have been the main source for this scarce resource.

"'During weathering under the Archaean atmosphere, the fresh basaltic rock would have slowly dissolved, releasing the essential macro-nutrient phosphorus into the rivers. That would have fed microbes that were living in the shallow coastal zones and triggered increased biological productivity that would have created, as a byproduct, an oxygen spike," Meixnerová said.

"The precise location of those volcanoes and lava fields is unknown, but large lava fields of about the right age exist in modern-day India, Canada and elsewhere, Buick said.

"'Our study suggests that for these transient whiffs of oxygen, the immediate trigger was an increase in oxygen production, rather than a decrease in oxygen consumption by rocks or other nonliving processes," Buick said. "It's important because the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere is fundamental -- it's the biggest driver for the evolution of large, complex life.'" (my bold)

Comment: Note my bold. I don't think oxygen as a driver of evolution. Lots of oxygen allows evolution to advance but the driver is up for debate here. Again this shows how our planet evolved to support life, but remember the origin of life predates oxygen by its appearance with other metabolisms at about 3.5 billion years ago, all previously presented here.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210324142839.htm

"Researchers find that the earliest bacteria had the tools to perform a crucial step in photosynthesis, changing how we think life evolved on Earth.

***

"Lead researcher Dr Tanai Cardona, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "We had previously shown that the biological system for performing oxygen-production, known as Photosystem II, was extremely old, but until now we hadn't been able to place it on the timeline of life's history. Now, we know that Photosystem II show patterns of evolution that are usually only attributed to the oldest known enzymes, which were crucial for life itself to evolve."

***

"The new research finds that enzymes capable of performing the key process in oxygenic photosynthesis -- splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen -- could actually have been present in some of the earliest bacteria. The earliest evidence for life on Earth is over 3.4 billion years old and some studies have suggested that the earliest life could well be older than 4.0 billion years old.

***

"On Earth, it took more than a billion years for bacteria to perfect the process leading to the evolution of cyanobacteria, and two billion years more for animals and plants to conquer the land. However, that oxygen production was present at all so early on means in other environments, such as on other planets, the transition to complex life could have taken much less time.

"The team made their discovery by tracing the 'molecular clock' of key photosynthesis proteins responsible for splitting water. This method estimates the rate of evolution of proteins by looking at the time between known evolutionary moments, such as the emergence of different groups of cyanobacteria or land plants, which carry a version of these proteins today. The calculated rate of evolution is then extended back in time, to see when the proteins first evolved.

"They compared the evolution rate of these photosynthesis proteins to that of other key proteins in the evolution of life, including those that form energy storage molecules in the body and those that translate DNA sequences into RNA, which is thought to have originated before the ancestor of all cellular life on Earth. They also compared the rate to events known to have occurred more recently, when life was already varied and cyanobacteria had appeared.

"The photosynthesis proteins showed nearly identical patterns of evolution to the oldest enzymes, stretching far back in time, suggesting they evolved in a similar way.

"First author of the study Thomas Oliver, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "We have used a technique called Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction to predict the protein sequences of ancestral photosynthetic proteins. These sequences give us information on how the ancestral Photosystem II would have worked and we were able to show that many of the key components required for oxygen evolution in Photosystem II can be traced to the earliest stages in the evolution of the enzyme.'"

Comment: The mechanism of photosynthesis is vital for life to become complex, which occurred after the Great Oxygenation Event. Looking at the early timing of development, it seems to me to be carefully planned and designed by God.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210302094108.htm

"Highly productive crops such as sugarcane, sorghum and maize belong to the type of plants that use the more efficient C4 photosynthetic pathway to transform water, sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) into sugars.

"Scientists have known for a long time that one of key factors that makes C4 photosynthesis more efficient is that they have the capacity to enclose CO2 inside a gas tight compartment in the leaf tissue, making it easier for the inefficient photosynthetic enzyme Rubisco to fix carbon. "The big question we haven't been able to answer until now is what makes this compartment gas tight so CO2 can't escape?" says lead author Dr Florence Danila, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis (CoETP) at the Australian National University (ANU).

"'Our research provides several pieces of evidence about the responsibility of suberin on making the leaf cells of C4 plants, gas tight. Suberin forms a layer that keeps CO2 gas inside a layer of cells called the bundle sheath.

***

"Now, for the first time, we have been able to see clearly under the microscope, the anatomical differences between plants with and without suberin.

***

"Centre Director and co-author of the paper Bob Furbank says that "this is a very exciting discovery, one of the last mechanistic pieces of the C4 photosynthesis puzzle, as Hal Hatch, the discoverer of the C4 pathway noted some time ago."

"'It shows that science discoveries can take a long time to be solved and that the recipe for eureka moments like this are the collaborative work of several experts combined with modern technologies, plus a pinch of serendipity."

Comment: This highly complex system which produces oxygen for the whole Earth has so many interlocking parts it could not have developed by chance. Design required.

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-great-oxygenation-event.html

"Around 2.5 billion years ago, our planet experienced what was possibly the greatest change in its history: According to the geological record, molecular oxygen suddenly went from nonexistent to becoming freely available everywhere. Evidence for the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) is clearly visible, for example, in banded iron formations containing oxidized iron. The GOE, of course, is what allowed oxygen-using organisms—respirators—and ultimately ourselves, to evolve. But was it indeed a 'great event' in the sense that the change was radical and sudden, or were the organisms alive at the time already using free oxygen, just at lower levels?

***

"The question that has not been resolved, however, is: Did the production of oxygen coincide with the GOE, or did living organisms have access to oxygen even before that event? One side of this debate states that molecular oxygen would not have been available before the GOE, as the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans prior to that time would have ensured that any oxygen released by photosynthesis would have immediately reacted chemically. A second side of the debate, however, suggests that some of the oxygen produced by the photosynthetic microorganisms may have remained free long enough for non-photosynthetic organisms to snap it up for their own use, even before the GOE. Several conjectures in between these two have proposed 'oases,' or short-lived 'waves,' of atmospheric oxygenation.

***

"The phylogenetic trees the researchers ultimately obtained showed a burst of oxygen-based enzyme evolution about 3 billion years ago—something like half a billion years before the GOE. Examining this time frame further, the scientists found that rather than coinciding with the takeover of atmospheric oxygen, this burst dated to the time that bacteria left the oceans and began to colonize the land. A few oxygen-using enzymes could be traced back even farther. If oxygen use had coincided with the GOE, the enzymes that use it would have evolved later, so the findings supported the scenario in which oxygen was already known to many life forms by the time the GOE took place.

"The scenario that Jabłońska and Tawfik propose looks something like this: Oxygen is one of the most chemically reactive elements around. Like one end of a battery, it readily accepts electrons, thus providing extra metabolic power. That makes it extremely useful to many life forms, but also potentially damaging. So photosynthetic organisms as well as other organisms living in their vicinity had to quickly develop ways to efficiently dispose of oxygen. This would account for the emergence of oxygen-utilizing enzymes that would remove molecular oxygen from cells. One microorganism's waste, however, is another's potential source of life. Oxygen's unique reactivity enabled organisms to break down and use "resilient" molecules such as aromatics and lipids, so enzymes that take up and use oxygen likely began evolving soon after. (my bold)

"Tawfik says, "This confirms the hypothesis that oxygen appeared and persisted in the biosphere well before the GOE. It took time to achieve the higher GOE level, but by then oxygen was widely known in the biosphere.'"

Comment: An extremely clear picture of how to use oxygen and handle its dangerous side effects. Note my bold. Of course I believe God managed all of this progress with oxygen.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-volcanic-earth-mantle-key-atmospheric.html

"Oxygen first accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago, during the Great Oxidation Event. A long-standing puzzle has been that geologic clues suggest early bacteria were photosynthesizing and pumping out oxygen hundreds of millions of years before then. Where was it all going?

"Something was holding back oxygen's rise. A new interpretation of rocks billions of years old finds volcanic gases are the likely culprits.

***

"'The data demonstrates that an evolution of the mantle of the Earth could control an evolution of the atmosphere of the Earth, and possibly an evolution of life."

***

"The Archean Eon, when only microbial life was widespread on Earth, was more volcanically active than today. Volcanic eruptions are fed by magma—a mixture of molten and semi-molten rock—as well as gases that escape even when the volcano is not erupting.

"The Archean Eon, when only microbial life was widespread on Earth, was more volcanically active than today.

"Volcanic eruptions are fed by magma—a mixture of molten and semi-molten rock—as well as gases that escape even when the volcano is not erupting.

The new study combines that data with evidence from ancient sedimentary rocks to show a tipping point sometime after 2.5 billion years ago, when oxygen produced by microbes overcame its loss to volcanic gases and began to accumulate in the atmosphere.

"'Basically, the supply of oxidizable volcanic gases was capable of gobbling up photosynthetic oxygen for hundreds of millions of years after photosynthesis evolved," said co-author David Catling, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. "But as the mantle itself became more oxidized, fewer oxidizable volcanic gases were released. Then oxygen flooded the air when there was no longer enough volcanic gas to mop it all up.'"

Comment: All the processes that evolved the Earth for life seem to have been involved in setting the high level of atmospheric oxygen we have now.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190725120556.htm

"Structures inside rare bacteria are similar to those that power photosynthesis in plants today, suggesting the process is older than assumed.

***

"Scientists have always assumed that anoxygenic photosynthesis is more 'primitive', and that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved from it. Under this view, anoxygenic photosynthesis emerged about 3.5 billion years ago and oxygenic photosynthesis evolved a billion years later.

"However, by analysing structures inside an ancient type of bacteria, Imperial College London researchers have suggested that a key step in oxygenic photosynthesis may have already been possible a billion years before commonly thought.

***

"The bacteria they studied, Heliobacterium modesticaldum, is found around hot springs, soils and waterlogged fields, where it performs anoxygenic photosynthesis. It is very distantly related to cyanobacteria, the main bacteria that performs oxygenic photosynthesis today.

"It is so distantly related that it last had a 'common ancestor' with cyanobacteria billions of years ago. This means that any traits the two bacteria share are likely to also have been present in the ancient bacteria that gave rise to them both.

"By analysing the structures that both H. modesticaldum and modern cyanobacteria use to perform their different types of photosynthesis, Dr Cardona found striking similarities.

"Both structures contain a site that cyanobacteria and plants exclusively use to split water -- the first crucial step in oxygenic photosynthesis.

"The evolution of cyanobacteria is usually assumed to also be the first appearance of oxygenic photosynthesis, but the fact that H. modesticaldum contains a similar site means that the building blocks for oxygenic photosynthesis are likely much more ancient than thought, as old as photosynthesis itself, and therefore could have arisen much earlier in Earth's history.

"Dr Cardona also suggests that this might mean oxygenic photosynthesis was not the product of a billion years of evolution from anoxygenic photosynthesis, but could have been a trait that evolved much sooner, if not first.

"Dr Cardona said: "This result helps explain in fantastic detail why the systems responsible for photosynthesis and oxygen production are the way they are today- but for it to make sense it requires a change of perspective in the way we view the evolution of photosynthesis.

"'Under the traditional view -- that anoxygenic photosynthesis evolved first and was the only type for about a billion years or more before oxygenic photosynthesis evolved -- these structures should not exist at all in this type of bacteria.'"

Comment: this suggests photosynthesis appeared extremely early and supports my theory that God planned for a heavily oxygenated Earth as part of his pre-planning for evolution's future.

DAVID: It is the underlying mechanism of your comment that is at issue. I view it as much more active than your passive approach of changing environment pushing the animals to change.

dhw: This is not a passive process! It is the very opposite! Environmental change either demands or allows new actions. Survival depends on active change (= adaptation), and innovation depends on inventiveness, which is even more active. The changed environment is the trigger for action – passivity in most cases will result in extinction. According to you, however, organisms do absolutely nothing apart from magically turning on the one special programme passed down by the very first cells for every single change or, alternatively, lying/sitting there while your God performs his operations or delivers his lectures on how-to-do-it.

DAVID: Yes, this is a discussion about how speciation works. The minor adaptations we see have never been proven to do any more than that. The fossil record only shows large gaps which reinforces the problem about adaptations leading to anything. The changes we do see in any species series requires design and planning, as I view it.

I have answered your criticism that my hypothesis is passive, and so now you revert to the fact that nothing is proven. I know. Your hypothesis that your God planned every undabbled change 3.8 billion years ago and put the whole programme into the very first cells is also an unproven hypothesis. Please move on.
[…]
DAVID: And they still have four legs despite all that time in water, It is obviously something besides environment that guides development of new forms and major modifications.

dhw: There is no need to tell us that every species is different, and of course there is “something” which develops the new forms to cope with or exploit the new environment. I propose cellular intelligence, and you propose ye ancient computer programme or dabbling. Once an organism has found a means of survival that enables it to cope with its environment, there is no need for it to change. Hence bacteria from the year dot. Some organisms remain the same (hippo), whereas others may find means of improving their chances of survival by producing new structures for themselves (whales). In your own mish-mush of hypotheses, you simply have your God organizing the same process – his programmes and dabbles result in different ways of coping with or exploiting the environment (or of course not coping, and going extinct), but you have the anatomical changes taking place before the environmental changes.

DAVID: In this arena of land animals going aquatic, those that choose to do so must solve major physiologic problems. Tell me how whales learned to give birth and nurse under water. Trial and error won't work. In view of that one point, to me your theory of speciation is impossible.

Why are you asking me to solve a mystery that not even the greatest minds on earth have yet managed to solve? Once more, nobody knows how all these changes take place. That is why you and I can only offer unproven hypotheses. (See also “Bacterial intelligence”.)

I like my theory and you have yours. We'll stop,

dhw: This is not a passive process! It is the very opposite! Environmental change either demands or allows new actions. Survival depends on active change (= adaptation), and innovation depends on inventiveness, which is even more active. The changed environment is the trigger for action – passivity in most cases will result in extinction. According to you, however, organisms do absolutely nothing apart from magically turning on the one special programme passed down by the very first cells for every single change or, alternatively, lying/sitting there while your God performs his operations or delivers his lectures on how-to-do-it.

DAVID: Yes, this is a discussion about how speciation works. The minor adaptations we see have never been proven to do any more than that. The fossil record only shows large gaps which reinforces the problem about adaptations leading to anything. The changes we do see in any species series requires design and planning, as I view it.

I have answered your criticism that my hypothesis is passive, and so now you revert to the fact that nothing is proven. I know. Your hypothesis that your God planned every undabbled change 3.8 billion years ago and put the whole programme into the very first cells is also an unproven hypothesis. Please move on.
[…]
DAVID: And they still have four legs despite all that time in water, It is obviously something besides environment that guides development of new forms and major modifications.

dhw: There is no need to tell us that every species is different, and of course there is “something” which develops the new forms to cope with or exploit the new environment. I propose cellular intelligence, and you propose ye ancient computer programme or dabbling. Once an organism has found a means of survival that enables it to cope with its environment, there is no need for it to change. Hence bacteria from the year dot. Some organisms remain the same (hippo), whereas others may find means of improving their chances of survival by producing new structures for themselves (whales). In your own mish-mush of hypotheses, you simply have your God organizing the same process – his programmes and dabbles result in different ways of coping with or exploiting the environment (or of course not coping, and going extinct), but you have the anatomical changes taking place before the environmental changes.

DAVID: In this arena of land animals going aquatic, those that choose to do so must solve major physiologic problems. Tell me how whales learned to give birth and nurse under water. Trial and error won't work. In view of that one point, to me your theory of speciation is impossible.

Why are you asking me to solve a mystery that not even the greatest minds on earth have yet managed to solve? Once more, nobody knows how all these changes take place. That is why you and I can only offer unproven hypotheses. (See also “Bacterial intelligence”.)

DAVID: It is the underlying mechanism of your comment that is at issue. I view it as much more active than your passive approach of changing environment pushing the animals to change.

dhw: This is not a passive process! It is the very opposite! Environmental change either demands or allows new actions. Survival depends on active change (= adaptation), and innovation depends on inventiveness, which is even more active. The changed environment is the trigger for action – passivity in most cases will result in extinction. According to you, however, organisms do absolutely nothing apart from magically turning on the one special programme passed down by the very first cells for every single change or, alternatively, lying/sitting there while your God performs his operations or delivers his lectures on how-to-do-it.

Yes, this is a discussion about how speciation works. The minor adaptations we see have never been proven to do any more than that. The fossil record only shows large gaps which reinforces the problem about adaptations leading to anything. The changes we do see in any species series requires design and planning, as I view it.

DAVID: The hippopotamus makes a major point:
The Hippo is a creature that has been around for a very long time. There is evidence to suggest they walked on the Earth more than 55 million years ago. The closest relatives of the Hippo are whales and porpoises. There are fossils that have been located in Africa that are dated back about 16 million years ago. They have been analyzed on many levels to give us some insight about Hippo evolution.
https://www.hippoworlds.com/hippopotamus-evolution/

And they still have four legs despite all that time in water, It is obviously something besides environment that guides development of new forms and major modifications.

dhw: There is no need to tell us that every species is different, and of course there is “something” which develops the new forms to cope with or exploit the new environment. I propose cellular intelligence, and you propose ye ancient computer programme or dabbling. Once an organism has found a means of survival that enables it to cope with its environment, there is no need for it to change. Hence bacteria from the year dot. Some organisms remain the same (hippo), whereas others may find means of improving their chances of survival by producing new structures for themselves (whales). In your own mish-mush of hypotheses, you simply have your God organizing the same process – his programmes and dabbles result in different ways of coping with or exploiting the environment (or of course not coping, and going extinct), but you have the anatomical changes taking place before the environmental changes.

In this arena of land animals going aquatic, those that choose to do so must solve major physiologic problems. Tell me how whales learned to give birth and nurse under water. Trial and error won't work. In view of that one point, to me your theory of speciation is impossible.

dhw: Of course there is an underlying mechanism, but that does not contradict the author’s emphasis on the importance of the environment. You could not have a clearer example of the way in which many of us believe evolution works: as the environment changes, organisms may need to change their structures in order to survive (= adaptation), or they may exploit the new conditions to invent new structures (innovation). […]
DAVID: It is the underlying mechanism of your comment that is at issue. I view it as much more active than your passive approach of changing environment pushing the animals to change.

This is not a passive process! It is the very opposite! Environmental change either demands or allows new actions. Survival depends on active change (= adaptation), and innovation depends on inventiveness, which is even more active. The changed environment is the trigger for action – passivity in most cases will result in extinction. According to you, however, organisms do absolutely nothing apart from magically turning on the one special programme passed down by the very first cells for every single change or, alternatively, lying/sitting there while your God performs his operations or delivers his lectures on how-to-do-it.

DAVID: The hippopotamus makes a major point:
The Hippo is a creature that has been around for a very long time. There is evidence to suggest they walked on the Earth more than 55 million years ago. The closest relatives of the Hippo are whales and porpoises. There are fossils that have been located in Africa that are dated back about 16 million years ago. They have been analyzed on many levels to give us some insight about Hippo evolution.
https://www.hippoworlds.com/hippopotamus-evolution/

And they still have four legs despite all that time in water, It is obviously something besides environment that guides development of new forms and major modifications.

There is no need to tell us that every species is different, and of course there is “something” which develops the new forms to cope with or exploit the new environment. I propose cellular intelligence, and you propose ye ancient computer programme or dabbling. Once an organism has found a means of survival that enables it to cope with its environment, there is no need for it to change. Hence bacteria from the year dot. Some organisms remain the same (hippo), whereas others may find means of improving their chances of survival by producing new structures for themselves (whales). In your own mish-mush of hypotheses, you simply have your God organizing the same process – his programmes and dabbles result in different ways of coping with or exploiting the environment (or of course not coping, and going extinct), but you have the anatomical changes taking place before the environmental changes.

QUOTES with David’s bolds: "The study, published today in Nature Geoscience by scientists from the UK, China and Russia, gives strong support to the theory that oxygen content in the atmosphere was a major controlling factor in animal evolution.

"The study is the first to show that during the Cambrian explosion there was significant correlation between surges in oxygen levels and bursts in animal evolution and biodiversity, as well as extinction events during periods of low oxygen."

"… we can clearly see that evolutionary radiations follow a pattern of 'boom and bust' in tandem with the oxygen levels".

"'This strongly suggests oxygen played a vital role in the emergence of early animal life."
Study co-author Professor Graham Shields from UCL Earth Sciences, said: "This is the first study to show clearly that our earliest animal ancestors experienced a series of evolutionary radiations and bottlenecks caused by extreme changes in atmospheric oxygen levels.

"….giving us new insight into how oxygen shaped the life we have on the planet today."[/b]

DAVID: The oxygen levels were very important factors in allowing the diversification of new forms, but there is an underlying evolutionary driving mechanism which is the real cause of the new animals. Note my bolds about oxygen which tends to blur this point. The final bold above makes the point of how sloppy the authors have been in describing the role of oxygen. Oxygen allows the newly designed form to appear, but does not initiate anything. Again, a Darwinism slant in the reporting.

dhw: Of course there is an underlying mechanism, but that does not contradict the author’s emphasis on the importance of the environment. You could not have a clearer example of the way in which many of us believe evolution works: as the environment changes, organisms may need to change their structures in order to survive (= adaptation), or they may exploit the new conditions to invent new structures (innovation). According to your theory, your God must have preprogrammed or dabbled the increase in oxygen, and provided the first living cells with a programme for every single undabbled innovation made possible by it. My theistic proposal is that he provided the first living cells with an autonomous intelligence enabling some (but not all) their descendants to cope with or exploit the new conditions. Neither proposal is contradicted by the article itself, with the possible exception of the word "caused" in the last quote. Perhaps "triggered" would be better, unless you wish to tell us that your God preprogrammed/dabbled the new species BEFORE the increase in oxygen - as you think he turned whale legs into flippers BEFORE pre-whales entered the water.

It is the underlying mechanism of your comment that is at issue. I view it as much more active than your passive approach of changing environment pushing the animals to change. The hippopotamus makes a major point:

The Hippo is a creature that has been around for a very long time. There is evidence to suggest they walked on the Earth more than 55 million years ago. The closest relatives of the Hippo are whales and porpoises. There are fossils that have been located in Africa that are dated back about 16 million years ago. They have been analyzed on many levels to give us some insight about Hippo evolution.

https://www.hippoworlds.com/hippopotamus-evolution/

And they still have four legs despite all that time in water, It is obviously something besides environment that guides development of new forms and major modifications.

"The study is the first to show that during the Cambrian explosion there was significant correlation between surges in oxygen levels and bursts in animal evolution and biodiversity, as well as extinction events during periods of low oxygen."

"… we can clearly see that evolutionary radiations follow a pattern of 'boom and bust' in tandem with the oxygen levels".

"'This strongly suggests oxygen played a vital role in the emergence of early animal life."
Study co-author Professor Graham Shields from UCL Earth Sciences, said: "This is the first study to show clearly that our earliest animal ancestors experienced a series of evolutionary radiations and bottlenecks caused by extreme changes in atmospheric oxygen levels.

"….giving us new insight into how oxygen shaped the life we have on the planet today."[/b]

DAVID: The oxygen levels were very important factors in allowing the diversification of new forms, but there is an underlying evolutionary driving mechanism which is the real cause of the new animals. Note my bolds about oxygen which tends to blur this point. The final bold above makes the point of how sloppy the authors have been in describing the role of oxygen. Oxygen allows the newly designed form to appear, but does not initiate anything. Again, a Darwinism slant in the reporting.

Of course there is an underlying mechanism, but that does not contradict the author’s emphasis on the importance of the environment. You could not have a clearer example of the way in which many of us believe evolution works: as the environment changes, organisms may need to change their structures in order to survive (= adaptation), or they may exploit the new conditions to invent new structures (innovation). According to your theory, your God must have preprogrammed or dabbled the increase in oxygen, and provided the first living cells with a programme for every single undabbled innovation made possible by it. My theistic proposal is that he provided the first living cells with an autonomous intelligence enabling some (but not all) their descendants to cope with or exploit the new conditions. Neither proposal is contradicted by the article itself, with the possible exception of the word "caused" in the last quote. Perhaps "triggered" would be better, unless you wish to tell us that your God preprogrammed/dabbled the new species BEFORE the increase in oxygen - as you think he turned whale legs into flippers BEFORE pre-whales entered the water.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-oxygen-linked-boom-early-animal.html

"Extreme fluctuations in atmospheric oxygen levels corresponded with evolutionary surges and extinctions in animal biodiversity during the Cambrian explosion, finds new study led by UCL and the University of Leeds.

"The Cambrian explosion was a crucial period of rapid evolution in complex animals that began roughly 540 million years ago. The trigger for this fundamental phase in the early history of animal life is a subject of ongoing biological debate.

"The study, published today in Nature Geoscience by scientists from the UK, China and Russia, gives strong support to the theory that oxygen content in the atmosphere was a major controlling factor in animal evolution. (my bold)

"The study is the first to show that during the Cambrian explosion there was significant correlation between surges in oxygen levels and bursts in animal evolution and biodiversity, as well as extinction events during periods of low oxygen.

***

"'
"By analysing the carbon and sulphur isotopes found in ancient rocks, we are able to trace oxygen variations in Earth's atmosphere and shallow oceans during the Cambrian Explosion. When compared to fossilised animals from the same time we can clearly see that evolutionary radiations follow a pattern of 'boom and bust' in tandem with the oxygen levels.

"'This strongly suggests oxygen played a vital role in the emergence of early animal life."
Study co-author Professor Graham Shields from UCL Earth Sciences, said: "This is the first study to show clearly that our earliest animal ancestors experienced a series of evolutionary radiations and bottlenecks caused by extreme changes in atmospheric oxygen levels. (my bold)

"'The result was a veritable explosion of new animal forms during more than 13 million years of the Cambrian Period. In that time, Earth went from being populated by simple, single-celled and immobile organisms to hosting the wonderful variety of intricate, energetic life forms we see today."

"The team analysed the carbon and sulphur isotopes from marine carbonate samples collected from sections along the Aldan and Lena rivers in Siberia. During the time of the Cambrian explosion this area would have been a shallow sea and the home for the majority of animal life on Earth.

***

"'The Siberian Platform gives us a unique window into early marine ecosystems. This area contains over half of all currently known fossilised diversity from the Cambrian explosion.

"'Combining our isotope measurements with a mathematical model lets us track the pulses of carbon and sulphur entering the sediments in this critical evolutionary cradle. Our model uses this information to estimate the global balance of oxygen production and destruction, giving us new insight into how oxygen shaped the life we have on the planet today."

Comment: The oxygen levels were very important factors in allowing the diversification of new forms, but there is an underlying evolutionary driving mechanism which is the real cause of the new animals. Note my bolds about oxygen which tends to blur this point . The final bold above makes the point of how sloppy the authors have been in describing the role of oxygen. Oxygen allows the newly designed form to appear, but does not initiate anything. Again, a Darwinism slant in the reporting.

David: "Torres, a Rice assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, and his colleagues report in Nature Geoscience that the balance of sulfur isotope anomalies in Archean rock, a marker of the "great oxygenation event," can also be recognized and measured in the rivers that erode it.

"The researchers sampled water from two of the few places on Earth where Archean rock is exposed in abundance: at the Superior Craton in Canada and in South Africa. They determined that while individual samples of rock may still show an imbalance (the anomalies) of sulfur isotopes, careful analysis of the water that diffuses and transports sulfur from thousands of miles of rock to the ocean shows that the contents are ultimately in alignment with bulk Earth's sulfur signature.

Tony: Hey, just throw out the data that doesn't fit....

DAvid: "'Changes in chemistry can tell you something about the environment, and rocks can tell you whether there was oxygen at a particular time," Torres said. "Early in our history, sulfur isotope anomalies are all over the place. Then, roughly 2.7 billion years ago, they disappear and they never come back."

"Sulfur is a marker because four stable isotopes, known by their molecular masses of 32, 33, 34 and 36, can show different behaviors when present in the atmosphere. "Most sulfur is mass 32, but there are small amounts of the other masses," Torres said.

"Ultraviolet light from the sun reacted with sulfur gas and split it into separate compounds with heavier and lighter isotopes. Eventually, these compounds sunk into and remain in rock that formed at the time.

"'But there's this weird thing: Really old rocks have more 33-sulfur in them than we would expect, based on the relative masses," Torres said. "Because 33 is one heavier than 32, we should easily be able to predict their relative abundances using physical chemistry. But, we find that 33 is way more abundant than expected. That's why we call it an anomaly."

Tony: The geological organization of the elements don't match predictions.

David: "When oxygen appeared, it absorbed ultraviolet light and quenched the sulfur reaction, as seen in the rock. That's all well and good, Torres said, but the theory doesn't account for anomalous sulfur that continued to leach from Archean rock into surface water, be carried to the ocean and then condense into new rock that would also have the anomaly.

"'This recycling of ancient rock was a way to perpetuate the anomaly even after oxygen had arisen," he said. The researchers suspected persistence of the anomaly could blur understanding of the timing of oxygen's rise by as much as 100 million years.

"It didn't, they discovered, but it wasn't easy. The team included researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the Center for Petrographic and Geochemical Research in Nancy, France. Members collected scores of samples from the Canadian sites to go along with South African samples they already had and checked their sulfur signature after eliminating the effects of contaminants from sulfurous acid rain, ice-melting road salt and dust from local mining operations. But their final calculations showed a robust balance in 33-sulfur collected by river runoff over a wide area.

Tony: How can they account for those things with any degree of accuracy?

"'Our effort allows us to be confident we've got the timing for this great oxidation event, so now we can start to understand the mechanisms," Torres said. "If you think about the whole scope of Earth's history, 100 million years is small, but on the evolutionary timeline of organisms, it matters.'"

David Comment: Is life a result of chance processes? Or was this all a design with oxygen appearing at the correct time?

Tony: I am pretty certain the o2 bloom will be found in conjunction with a global uptick in cover vegetation, if evidence such as that is even possible to find. Grass and Trees in a carbon dioxide rich environment that broke up the global cloud cover left over from the cooling of the earths molten surface temperatures.

The plant bloom is supposed to follow the Cambrian by +/- a couple hundred million years later. Darwin could never explain its timing.

"Torres, a Rice assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, and his colleagues report in Nature Geoscience that the balance of sulfur isotope anomalies in Archean rock, a marker of the "great oxygenation event," can also be recognized and measured in the rivers that erode it.

"The researchers sampled water from two of the few places on Earth where Archean rock is exposed in abundance: at the Superior Craton in Canada and in South Africa. They determined that while individual samples of rock may still show an imbalance (the anomalies) of sulfur isotopes, careful analysis of the water that diffuses and transports sulfur from thousands of miles of rock to the ocean shows that the contents are ultimately in alignment with bulk Earth's sulfur signature.

Hey, just throw out the data that doesn't fit....

"'Changes in chemistry can tell you something about the environment, and rocks can tell you whether there was oxygen at a particular time," Torres said. "Early in our history, sulfur isotope anomalies are all over the place. Then, roughly 2.7 billion years ago, they disappear and they never come back."

"Sulfur is a marker because four stable isotopes, known by their molecular masses of 32, 33, 34 and 36, can show different behaviors when present in the atmosphere. "Most sulfur is mass 32, but there are small amounts of the other masses," Torres said.

"Ultraviolet light from the sun reacted with sulfur gas and split it into separate compounds with heavier and lighter isotopes. Eventually, these compounds sunk into and remain in rock that formed at the time.

"'But there's this weird thing: Really old rocks have more 33-sulfur in them than we would expect, based on the relative masses," Torres said. "Because 33 is one heavier than 32, we should easily be able to predict their relative abundances using physical chemistry. But, we find that 33 is way more abundant than expected. That's why we call it an anomaly."

The geological organization of the elements don't match predictions.

"When oxygen appeared, it absorbed ultraviolet light and quenched the sulfur reaction, as seen in the rock. That's all well and good, Torres said, but the theory doesn't account for anomalous sulfur that continued to leach from Archean rock into surface water, be carried to the ocean and then condense into new rock that would also have the anomaly.

"'This recycling of ancient rock was a way to perpetuate the anomaly even after oxygen had arisen," he said. The researchers suspected persistence of the anomaly could blur understanding of the timing of oxygen's rise by as much as 100 million years.

"It didn't, they discovered, but it wasn't easy. The team included researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the Center for Petrographic and Geochemical Research in Nancy, France. Members collected scores of samples from the Canadian sites to go along with South African samples they already had and checked their sulfur signature after eliminating the effects of contaminants from sulfurous acid rain, ice-melting road salt and dust from local mining operations. But their final calculations showed a robust balance in 33-sulfur collected by river runoff over a wide area.

How can they account for those things with any degree of accuracy?

"'Our effort allows us to be confident we've got the timing for this great oxidation event, so now we can start to understand the mechanisms," Torres said. "If you think about the whole scope of Earth's history, 100 million years is small, but on the evolutionary timeline of organisms, it matters.'"

David Comment: Is life a result of chance processes? Or was this all a design with oxygen appearing at the correct time?

I am pretty certain the o2 bloom will be found in conjunction with a global uptick in cover vegetation, if evidence such as that is even possible to find. Grass and Trees in a carbon dioxide rich environment that broke up the global cloud cover left over from the cooling of the earths molten surface temperatures.