• Question: What is the first ever organisam to breath out oxygen into the atmosphere?

    Asked by conn206 to Donna, Jo, Mark, Stuart, timcraggs on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      This is a really good question. The answer is primitive green and purple bacteria (colour is determined by the chlorophyll contained in them, which is used for photosynthesis). These bacteria were the precursors of cyanobacteria (which still carry out photosynthesis) and also chloroplasts in plants and algae.

      BTW Did you know that bacteria are also the precursors of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells?

    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      They’ve found a 420 million year old fossil of a millipede that had primitive breathing structures. So it’d be something like that…

    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Bacteria. Those little guys get everywhere, don’t they?

      They’ve very recently found some bacteria in the gut of a bee forever immortalised in amber. It was 25 million years old. How cool is that?!

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