Dust off those life-on-other-planets hard sf stories in your trunks, writer-types, because the subgenre might just have had a much-needed shot in the arm: the oddly-named Zoologger is a little multicellular critter discovered in deep mud in the Mediterranean, and it doesn’t need oxygen for its survival or reproduction.
2 thoughts on “Oxygen not a prerequisite for life after all”
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Zoologger is the blog category, the species name is not yet assigned.
There are plenty of bacteria which can exist without oxygen, but this is the first multicellular organism that has been discovered to do so. Interestingly, it belongs to a known phylum, the Loricifera, which begs the question of how it traded its mitochondia for hydrogenosomes (my ref is: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100407094450.htm).
1. this is very neat.
2. I have been reading *way* too much “append the words – ‘in my pants’ to a phrase” humour of late, because the words “hard sf stories in your trunks” had entirely the wrong ring to it.