More about life and Diatoms found in Meteorites (youTube)
Mike, I'll bet those fossils were found in "
Meteorwrongs."
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Also==> Feel free to edit: 4.4 billion years ago (not over 44, right?)
& do you mean 4.0 billion years ago (rather than 40 million)?
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Back in those early days, all the oxygen was bound up geologically as carbonates, silicates, nitrates and sulfates, and oxides of the metals. In various acidic or alkaline conditions, primitive life can utilize some of these to gain energy--releasing some oxygen. But not enough oxygen is released to build up an excess, and it usually reacts quickly with some other aspect of the geologic cycles.
Photosynthesis allowed enough oxygen to build up, so that there is an atmospheric excess, but if that daily production of oxygen suddenly stopped, the planet would quickly--within weeks or months I expect--soak up the "free" oxygen and only the more primitive life forms would survive.
It's so hard to believe we are so dependant upon the health of the Amazon and Oceans to produce most of our daily oxygen, perhaps I'm wrong about this; but I can't find any sources that say otherwise. Please help me learn how an "
Oceanic Anoxic Event" is not being made more likely by our destruction of the Amazon, the spread of "
dead zones," and the loss of polar ice that drives the "
deep ocean conveyor."
see also:
http://www.njgonline.nl/publish/articles/000311/article.pdfhttp//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/conveyor.html& additional on meteor
wrongs.
http://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/gladasked/gladmeteorite_id.htm~
