What is critical to advanced lifeforms? Not oxygen
Without oxygen, there would be no development beyond simple single-cellular organisms. Indeed, our model for how multi-cellular organisms came to flourish is based around the rising levels of atmospheric oxygen due to all the little burping eukaryotes.
It has long been the case that the only organisms which could survive without oxygen were bacteria and viruses. And since viruses are really mini death robots intent on the manipulation and destruction of life, and are not alive themselves at all, that left bacteria.
Until now.
From PopSci - who puts it well:
"Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona, Italy*, have discovered three new species that live their entire life in an anoxic pit beneath the Mediterranean Sea. This discovery drastically revises science's understand of where animals can thrive.
In the 236 years since oxygen was identified as a life-giving necessity, no scientist anywhere has discovered a multicellular animal capable of living without the stuff. Unlike plants, all previously discovered animals, and fungi, the newly discovered animal species don't use mitochondria, the cellular organelle that converts sugar and oxygen into water, CO2 and, energy, to power their cells. Instead, these weird creatures have an organelle that resembles a hydrogenosome, a cellular component used by some microbes to produce energy with complex enzymatic reactions. The organisms themselves, none of which have been named yet, all belong to the phylum Loricifera, measure less than 0.04 inches long, and were found almost 10,000 feet down in sediment previous assumed to contain only viruses and bacteria. This is not the first time that scientists have discovered animals living in an anoxic environment, but all the previously discovered species needed to surface periodically for some O2. That makes these creatures the first animals ever discovered that spend their whole lives without oxygen."
It is quite simply a revolutionary finding which greatly (and this is where I am the most interested) expands the possibilities for multi-cellular life in habitats (other planets) where we previously would have discounted any such possibility due to the lack of oxygen.
In the classic words of Dr. Ian Malcom (Jurassic Park): "Life will find a way"
It has long been the case that the only organisms which could survive without oxygen were bacteria and viruses. And since viruses are really mini death robots intent on the manipulation and destruction of life, and are not alive themselves at all, that left bacteria.
Until now.
Unnamed Loriciferan: via Nature
From PopSci - who puts it well:
"Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona, Italy*, have discovered three new species that live their entire life in an anoxic pit beneath the Mediterranean Sea. This discovery drastically revises science's understand of where animals can thrive.
In the 236 years since oxygen was identified as a life-giving necessity, no scientist anywhere has discovered a multicellular animal capable of living without the stuff. Unlike plants, all previously discovered animals, and fungi, the newly discovered animal species don't use mitochondria, the cellular organelle that converts sugar and oxygen into water, CO2 and, energy, to power their cells. Instead, these weird creatures have an organelle that resembles a hydrogenosome, a cellular component used by some microbes to produce energy with complex enzymatic reactions. The organisms themselves, none of which have been named yet, all belong to the phylum Loricifera, measure less than 0.04 inches long, and were found almost 10,000 feet down in sediment previous assumed to contain only viruses and bacteria. This is not the first time that scientists have discovered animals living in an anoxic environment, but all the previously discovered species needed to surface periodically for some O2. That makes these creatures the first animals ever discovered that spend their whole lives without oxygen."
It is quite simply a revolutionary finding which greatly (and this is where I am the most interested) expands the possibilities for multi-cellular life in habitats (other planets) where we previously would have discounted any such possibility due to the lack of oxygen.
In the classic words of Dr. Ian Malcom (Jurassic Park): "Life will find a way"
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