A scuba diver observes the purple, white and green microbes covering rocks in Lake Huron’s Middle Island Sinkhole. Credit: Phil Hartmeyer, NOAA Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
The rise of oxygen levels early in Earth’s history paved the way for the spectacular diversity of animal life. But for decades, scientists have struggled to explain the factors that controlled this gradual and stepwise process, which unfolded over nearly 2 billion years.
Now an international research team is proposing that increasing day length on the early Earth—the spinning of the young planet gradually slowed over time, making the days longer—may have boosted the amount of oxygen released by photosynthetic cyanobacteria, thereby shaping the timing of Earth’s oxygenation.
Their conclusion was inspired by a study of present-day microbial communities growing under extreme conditions at the bottom of a submerged Lake Huron sinkhole, 80 feet below the water’s surface. The water in the Middle Island Sinkhole is rich in sulfur and low in oxygen, and the brightly colored bacteria that thrive there are considered good analogs for the single-celled organisms that formed mat-like colonies billions of years ago, carpeting both land and seafloor surfaces.
The researchers show that longer day length increases the amount of oxygen released by photosynthetic microbial mats. That finding, in turn, points to a previously unconsidered link between Earth’s oxygenation history and its rotation rate. While the Earth now spins on its axis once every 24 hours, day length was possibly as brief as 6 hours during the planet’s infancy.
The team’s findings are scheduled for publication Aug. 2 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Lead authors are Judith Klatt of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and Arjun Chennu of the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research. Klatt is a former postdoctoral researcher in the lab of University of Michigan geomicrobiologist Gregory Dick, who is one of the study’s two corresponding authors. The other co-authors are from U-M and Grand Valley State University.
“An enduring question in the Earth sciences has been how did Earth’s atmosphere get its oxygen, and what factors controlled when this oxygenation took place,” Dick said from the deck of the R/V Storm, a 50-foot NOAA research vessel that carried a team of scientists and scuba divers on a sample-collection trip from the town of Alpena, Michigan, to the Middle Island Sinkhole, several miles offshore.
“Our research suggests that the rate at which the Earth is spinning—in other words, its day length—may have had an important effect on the pattern and timing of Earth’s oxygenation,” said Dick, a professor in the U-M Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
The researchers simulated the gradual slowing of Earth’s rotation rate and showed that longer days would have boosted the amount of oxygen released by early cyanobacterial mats in a manner that helps explain the planet’s two great oxygenation events.
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The project began when co-author Brian Arbic, a physical oceanographer in the U-M Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, heard a public lecture about Klatt’s work and noted that day length changes could play a role, over geological time, in the photosynthesis story that Dick’s lab was developing.
Cyanobacteria get a bad rap these days because they are the main culprits behind the unsightly and toxic algal blooms that plague Lake Erie and other water bodies around the world.
But these microbes, formerly known as blue-green algae, have been around for billions of years and were the first organisms to figure out how to capture energy from sunlight and use it to produce organic compounds through photosynthesis—releasing oxygen as a byproduct.
Masses of these simple organisms living in primeval seas are credited with releasing oxygen that later allowed for the emergence of multicellular animals. The planet was slowly transformed from one with vanishingly small amounts of oxygen to present-day atmospheric levels of around 21%.
At the Middle Island Sinkhole in Lake Huron, purple oxygen-producing cyanobacteria compete with white sulfur-oxidizing bacteria that use sulfur, not sunlight, as their main energy source.
In a microbial dance repeated daily at the bottom of the Middle Island Sinkhole, filmy sheets of purple and white microbes jockey for position as the day progresses and as environmental conditions slowly shift. The white sulfur-eating bacteria physically cover the purple cyanobacteria in the morning and evening, blocking their access to sunlight and preventing them from carrying out oxygen-producing photosynthesis.
But when sunlight levels increase to a critical threshold, the sulfur-oxidizing bacteria migrate back down below the photosynthetic cyanobacteria, enabling them to start producing oxygen.
This June 19, 2019 photo provided by NOAA Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary shows purple microbial mats in the Middle Island Sinkhole in Lake Huron, Mich. Small hills and “fingers” like this one in the mats are caused by gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide bubbling up beneath them. Feel like days are just getting longer? They are and it’s a good thing because we wouldn’t have much to breathe if they weren’t, according to a new explanation for how Earth’s oxygen rich atmosphere may have developed because of Earth’s rotation slowing. Scientists provided evidence for this new hypothesis by lab testing gooey smelly purple bacteria from a deep sinkhole in Lake Huron. Credit: Phil Hartmeyer/NOAA Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
The vertical migration of sulfur-oxidizing bacteria has been observed before. What’s new is that the authors of the Nature Geoscience study are the first to link these microbial movements, and the resultant rates of oxygen production, to changing day length throughout Earth’s history.
“Two groups of microbes in the Middle Island Sinkhole mats compete for the uppermost position, with sulfur-oxidizing bacteria sometimes shading the photosynthetically active cyanobacteria,” Klatt said while processing a core sample from Middle Island Sinkhole microbial mats in an Alpena laboratory. “It’s possible that a similar type of competition between microbes contributed to the delay in oxygen production on the early Earth.”
A key to understanding the proposed link between changing day length and Earth’s oxygenation is that longer days extend the afternoon high-light period, allowing photosynthetic cyanobacteria to crank out more oxygen.
“The idea is that with a shorter day length and shorter window for high-light conditions in the afternoon, those white sulfur-eating bacteria would be on top of the photosynthetic bacteria for larger portions of the day, limiting oxygen production,” Dick said as the boat rocked on choppy waters, moored a couple hundred yards from Middle Island.
The present-day Lake Huron microbes are believed to be good analogs for ancient organisms in part because the extreme environment at the bottom of the Middle Island Sinkhole likely resembles the harsh conditions that prevailed in the shallow seas of early Earth.
Lake Huron is underlain by 400-million-year-old limestone, dolomite and gypsum bedrock that formed from the saltwater seas that once covered the continent. Over time, the movement of groundwater dissolved some of that bedrock, forming caves and cracks that later collapsed to create both on-land and submerged sinkholes near Alpena.
Cold, oxygen-poor, sulfur-rich groundwater seeps into the bottom of the 300-foot-diameter Middle Island Sinkhole today, driving away most plants and animals but creating an ideal home for certain specialized microbes.
Dick’s team, in collaboration with co-author Bopaiah Biddanda of the Annis Water Resources Institute at Grand Valley State University, has been studying the microbial mats on the floor of Middle Island Sinkhole for several years, using a variety of techniques. With the help of scuba divers from NOAA’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary—which is best known for its shipwrecks but is also home to the Middle Island Sinkhole and several others like it—the researchers deployed instruments to the lake floor to study the chemistry and biology there.
They also brought mat samples to the lab to conduct experiments under controlled conditions.
Klatt hypothesized that the link between day length and oxygen release can be generalized to any given mat ecosystem, based on the physics of oxygen transport. She teamed up with Chennu to conduct detailed modeling studies to relate microbial mat processes to Earth-scale patterns over geological timescales.
The modeling studies revealed that day length does, in fact, shape oxygen release from the mats.
“Simply speaking, there is just less time for the oxygen to leave the mat in shorter days,” Klatt said.
This led the researchers to posit a possible link between longer day lengths and increasing atmospheric oxygen levels. The models show that this proposed mechanism might help explain the distinctive stepwise pattern of Earth’s oxygenation, as well as the persistence of low-oxygen periods through most of the planet’s history.
Throughout most of Earth’s history, atmospheric oxygen was only sparsely available and is believed to have increased in two broad steps. The Great Oxidation Event occurred about 2.4 billion years ago and has generally been credited to the earliest photosynthesizing cyanobacteria. Nearly 2 billion years later a second surge in oxygen, known as the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event, occurred.
Earth’s rotation rate has been slowly decreasing since the planet formed about 4.6 billion years ago due to the relentless tug of the moon’s gravity, which creates tidal friction.
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
![New theory: Earth's longer days kick-started oxygen growth](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2021/new-theory-earths-long.jpg "This June 19, 2019 photo provided by NOAA Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary shows purple microbial mats in the Middle Island Sinkhole in Lake Huron, Mich. Small hills and "fingers" like this one in the mats are caused by gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide bubbling up beneath them. Feel like days are just getting longer? They are and it's a good thing because we wouldn't have much to breathe if they weren't, according to a new explanation for how Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere may have developed because of Earth's rotation slowing. Scientists provided evidence for this new hypothesis by lab testing gooey smelly purple bacteria from a deep sinkhole in Lake Huron. Credit: Phil Hartmeyer/NOAA Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary")
