Seeping Methane and Early Earth
Evolutionary scientists have been speculating about conditions on a primordial earth. The failed Miller-Urey experiment was based on the assumption that our planet had a "reducing" atmosphere with gasses that prevented or removed oxygen, but scientists later found that oxygen was present early on. Oxygen is a paradox, because most life forms need it to survive, but something trying to evolve would be killed by it. So those owlhoots cling to their faith and try to cognate when oxygen arrived or formed on Earth. Without actual evidence, of course.
There are life forms that live in extreme oceanic environments, such as those in deep thermal vents. But there are things living in shallower, colder areas where methane seeps up from the ocean floor that are used, according to presumptions, to gauge changes early on our planet. Methane was one of the alleged primordial gasses in our planet's atmosphere. But things they relied on are found to live near methane seeps as well as in areas richer in oxygen. If these scientists didn't insist on their evolutionary and old-earth presumptions, they probably wouldn't be finding so many things on their dusty science trail that stampede their conjectures.
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| Methane bubbles rising from the sea bed / Image courtesy of the NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program. |
Fossils living in and around newly-discovered methane seeps have cast strong doubt on a leading theory of earth’s climate history.You can read the rest by clicking on "Theory of Early Oxygenation Undermined".
For a long time, evolutionary geologists have inferred the oxygen levels of ancient oceans by the fossils of marine organisms, particularly foraminifera (forams for short). That inference fed into theories of how life was evolving and how earth’s climate was changing. Now, studies of living forams in and around the seeps shows that forams live both close to the seeps and away from them.