The Planet's Long Youth

Nikolay L. DOBRETSOV

"Beginning" often means something from the old, distant, and forgotten past, like the childhood. This meaning is however poorly applicable to the evolution. The "childhood" of the biosphere ended not very long ago on the evolution time scale, presumably with the advent of metazoan organisms; the "eyewitnesses" and "participators" of that event are still living, safe and sound. For some reason, people find the crossopterygians much more impressive living samples of the fossil world than the fine filaments of blue-green spirulinas, though the latter, modest cyanobacteria, have remained true to themselves through the billion-years long history of the Earth…

ny general problem concerning the origin and mode of life of the earliest biota is sure to lead scientists, whatever be their field, to microbiology, the science that studies the first Earth's inhabitants who left their signature in the fossil record. The highly organized metazoans such as people have to admit the priority of bacteria as the basic population of our home planet to which the other organisms make just a later "supplement". Zavarzin, a well-known Russian microbiologist (Zavarzin, 1999; 2001; 2003), suggests that the bacterial world either has escaped evolution (in its common meaning) or took some different evolutionary paths than the multicellular plants and animals. This hypothesis appears controversial and thus especially fascinating...

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