[_ Old Earth _] Theory of Evolution crash course/Q&A

[Sparkey]

In order to completely take down the theory of evolution, you pretty much have to disprove most of...

Or, alternatively, find a scientist who simply states, "I'm uncertain about conclusions but I have observed this."
Wait! There are scientists like that. They are rare but may be found on both sides of the belief controversy.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
It demonstrates that the clotting system can kinda work, even if not fully evolved. The earliest version, in chordates, only involves a low-pressure system, in which proteins just tangle up at the damage, and trap blood cells to make a clot.

That still sounds pretty sophisticated to me.

Not very. Egg white will do that. Proteins denature on injury because of exposure to conditions out of the body. Cells get trapped. It doesn't work very well for us, because we have a high-pressure system. But it still works a little.

There are a good number of intermediate steps, many of which still exist in our bodies, which is why those knock-out mice can live in captivity without the usual clotting system.

Barbarian observes:
Mutation and gene duplication.

I still think mutations are a stretch since most only change existing base pairs.

There's a lot more than that. Gene duplications are quite common, and turn out to be a rich source of variation, since one copy can usually then mutate to something else.

I have to admit gene duplication is truly adding base pairs. I think ferns have tons of duplicate genes with little mutation since the error protection in DNA is so efficient though.

Population geneticists have noticed that mutation rates for organisms are usually very close to the calculated optimum for stability vs. necessary variation for survival.

Which seems to me duplication of genes (information) isn't quite "new" information.

It is. "1-1" has more information than "1." Sometimes, the organism actually can't live without two or more copies of the gene.

More often, the new gene can then mutate and can eventually be something useful.

I still think information is being lost in most species faster than it is being added.

Show us your evidence. Or is this more of a hunch?

 

[Vaccine]

My goal is to point out what the theoryis and what it isn't. What it can explain and what it can't. I knowmicro-evolution is well established, macro-evolution is inferred, andthey aren't going away anytime soon. I was wanting clarificationwhat it can explain and what it can't. I also wanted to know whyevolution is useful, specifically to medicine. My questions werealong this line:

Student: How is calculus useful inreal life?

Teacher: I see where this is going,calculus is an established fact.

Student: I think it sucks, how does ithelp balance a checkbook?

Teacher: Do you even know what calculusis?

Student: Sure, but does it explain...

Asking a few questions doesn't mean Iam trying “to completely take down the theory of evolution, ordisprove most of phylogeny, genetics, taxonomy, and over 500 years ofobserved research”.

I probably shouldn't have used suchcontroversial examples, and seen my comments had an unintended toneand maybe this would have happened:

New question: how does evolutionexplain an Osteoblast?

Possible answers:

1)This is just an basic Q & A meantfor high school level questions, that's best answered in an undergradclass or a book.

2)That is an origin question.

3)You're an idiot.

Number 2 was at least is the mosthelpful answer you gave. I was wanting clarification on the originsof a trait, whether evolution explains or infers their origin. Whatevolution is and what it isn't. I won't even bother withclarification about reproduction and evolution. And I will thank youfor these answers:

That wasextremely revolutionary to biology in the 19th century and it helpedto united the fields of taxonomy, genetics, and eccology.

Ecology,Medicine, and genetics all make sense and biologists can makeaccurage predictions based on what we know about the theory ofevolution.

Vaccinesare perfected with the knowledge of evolution, understanding humanancestry makes sense with the theory of evotuion, understandingevolution helps scientists breed animals and also helps with geneticmodification.

I would have a few comments about that,if this wasn't a Q & A. Don't misunderstand, I'm not challengingwhether micro-evolution happens to viruses, I just have opinions onhow useful that information is to research. My comments were whatgot us sidetracked, though. Those articles were a reply to thisquestion, damage to DNA and research was very off topic:

Do you havean up to date study or article to back this up?

Bystudying Canines, biologists have discovered that bears, wolves, anddogs are all part of the carnivore lineage. Bears developed biggerbodies, wolves and foxes adjusted to differnt hunting habits, anddogs were genetically bread by humans from wolves.

I see. I have a few questions aboutmacro-evolution, for clarification. But I think they can wait foranother thread.

 

[Vaccine]

Show us your evidence. Or is this more of a hunch?

More than a hunch, will start a thread soon.

 

[Milk-Drops]

I want to clear up that I by no means think of you as an idiot. If you are asking how the theory of evolution is useful, then I can answer that easily. When looking at a lineage of a species and want to better understand its origins, we can make prediction on what we hope to find. For instance, when comparing the lineage of modern wovles, bears, and dogs. We would look at Darwin's examples of homology that he picked up from taxonomy. From this, Darwin predicted that minor changes through natural selection could account for the differences in the homologous structures. When comparing Wolf, Dog, and bear bones and body structures we see many similarities with differences. With the theory of evolution, we would expect to see forms that show the splitting off of these groups. What we find are lineages that line up with both Darwin's predictions and with Genetics. The lineage of Bear-dogs exists and here is a quick wiki page about them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphicyonid

 

[Classik]

Helllo Meat. You know you have a wonderful username. Your username reminds me of soccer:D. Didn't know you're still around. Good!. Your post #105 has inspired a question in me!!! :dunno

 

[Barbarian]

My goal is to point out what the theoryis and what it isn't. What it can explain and what it can't. I knowmicro-evolution is well established, macro-evolution is inferred, andthey aren't going away anytime soon.

Macroevolution is directly observed. First documented example was about 1900.

 

[Vaccine]

I want to clear up that I by no means think of you as an idiot. If you are asking how the theory of evolution is useful, then I can answer that easily. When looking at a lineage of a species and want to better understand its origins, we can make prediction on what we hope to find. For instance, when comparing the lineage of modern wovles, bears, and dogs. We would look at Darwin's examples of homology that he picked up from taxonomy. From this, Darwin predicted that minor changes through natural selection could account for the differences in the homologous structures. When comparing Wolf, Dog, and bear bones and body structures we see many similarities with differences. With the theory of evolution, we would expect to see forms that show the splitting off of these groups. What we find are lineages that line up with both Darwin's predictions and with Genetics. The lineage of Bear-dogs exists and here is a quick wiki page about them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphicyonid

Thanks for clearing it up, and taking the time to explain it further.
For clarification, Darwin's expectation was that this splitting off would be gradual, over long periods of time. But that isn't what is observed?

And Gould amended the theory of evolution so the expectation was the splitting off would occur suddenly, over shorter periods of time?

 

[Milk-Drops]

Thanks for clearing it up, and taking the time to explain it further.
For clarification, Darwin's expectation was that this splitting off would be gradual, over long periods of time. But that isn't what is observed?

Actually we do observe this. Over great periods of time, from say the Cambrian to the Triassic there was massive evolution that took that time to happen.

And Gould amended the theory of evolution so the expectation was the splitting off would occur suddenly, over shorter periods of time?

Gould didn't' amend, but added to the theory. Gould pointed out that events can and have happened where rapid evolution takes place, usually after disasters. Both approaches are right, and Gould even points out that Punctuated Equilibrium doesn't replace Darwin's theory of natural selection.

 

[Asyncritus]

Barbarian:

Macroevolution is directly observed. First documented example was about 1900.

Oh yeah.

Tell us about it.

 

[Asyncritus]

Actually we do observe this. Over great periods of time, from say the Cambrian to the Triassic there was massive evolution that took that time to happen.

This is untrue.

The name, given by the palaeontologists themselves, to what happened in the Cambrian, is the CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION.

There's nothing gradual about it.

The Cambrian Period marks an important point in the history of life on Earth; it is the time when most of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record. This event is sometimes called the "Cambrian Explosion," because of the relatively short time over which this diversity of forms appears. It was once thought that Cambrian rocks contained the first and oldest fossil animals, but these are now found in the earlier Ediacaran (Vendian) strata.
Life
Almost every metazoan phylum with hard parts, and many that lack hard parts, made its first appearance in the Cambrian. The only modern phylum with an adequate fossil record to appear after the Cambrian was the phylum Bryozoa, which is not known before the early Ordovician. A few mineralized animal fossils, including sponge spicules and probable worm tubes, are known from the Ediacaran Period immediately preceding the Cambrian. Some of the odd fossils of the biota from the Ediacaran may also have been animals representative of living phyla, although this remains a somewhat controversial topic. However, the Cambrian was nonetheless a time of great evolutionary innovation, with many major groups of organisms appearing within a span of only forty million years.

The seemingly rapid appearance of fossils in the “Primordial Strata” was noted as early as the 1840s,[8] and in 1859 Charles Darwin discussed it as one of the main objections that could be made against his theory of evolution by natural selection.[9]wiki

That 40 million years ishas been shown to be a purely nonsensical figure.

Gould (and others) think it was 5 million years. Quite a difference!

f there is little evidence of evolutionary ancestors of the Cambrian animals
in Precambrian strata, there is also little evidence of intermediates of these
animals within the Cambrian rocks. According to Meyer, Nelson, and Chien,
“Though all Cambrian and subsequent animals fall clearly within one of a
limited number of basic body plans, each of these body plans exhibit clear
morphological differences (and, thus disparity) from the others.”7 There is
no evidence of body parts changing slowly over time; rather the image is,
for the most part, one of remarkable stability or stasis.
__________________________________________________________

7. Meyer, 4. “Morphological” means having to do with the structure and form of
organisms.
______________

http://lutheranscience.org/2012-CambrianExplosionParadox.html

Professor Jeffrey Levinton says, “The Cambrian explosion was characterized by the sudden and roughly simultaneous appearance of many diverse animal forms almost 600 million years ago. No other period in the history of animal life can match this remarkable burst of evolutionary creativity.”i
The theory of evolution suggests that throughout history, simple organisms evolved into more complex creatures. However, in the Cambrian, we find that the complex life forms existed right at the beginning.

There's more, a lot more: e.g.

Another Science Daily article, "Cambrian Fossil Pushes Back Evolution of Complex Brains," reports on a study of the brain of a "remarkably well-preserved fossil of an extinct arthropod" named Fuxianhuia protensa, which "shows that anatomically complex brains evolved earlier than previously thought and have changed little over the course of evolution." One scientist involved in the study is quoted as stating: "No one expected such an advanced brain would have evolved so early in the history of multicellular animals." Other comments cited in the story, which summarizes a paper in Nature, strike a similar note:

• "No one expected such an advanced brain would have evolved so early in the history of multicellular animals."
• "It is remarkable how constant the ground pattern of the nervous system has remained for probably more than 550 million years."
• "The basic organization of the computational circuitry that deals, say, with smelling, appears to be the same as the one that deals with vision, or mechanical sensation."
• "In principle, Fuxianhuia's is a very modern brain in an ancient animal."

The Nature paper, "Complex brain and optic lobes in an early Cambrian arthropod," likewise states:

The early origin of sophisticated brains provides a probable driver for versatile visual behaviors, a view that accords with compound eyes from the early Cambrian that were, in size and resolution, equal to those of modern insects and malacostracans.​

In other words, highly complex brains appeared early in the Cambrian explosion, without evolutionary precursors. What a headache!

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/from_the_cambri_1065181.html

So much for gradual evolution! You really should read up on this, meatballs, then spout.

Interesting title for the thread. Evolution crashed at birth, a lonnnnng time ago.

 

[Barbarian]

The name, given by the palaeontologists themselves, to what happened in the Cambrian, is the CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION.

There's nothing gradual about it.

If you think millions of years aren't "gradual." And, as you learned, the Cambrian "explosion" was preceded by over a billion years of slower evolution, first prokaryotes, then more complex living things, including forms that were once thought to have evolved in the Cambrian. Would you like me to show them to you, again?

The Cambrian Period marks an important point in the history of life on Earth; it is the time when most of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record. This event is sometimes called the "Cambrian Explosion," because of the relatively short time over which this diversity of forms appears. It was once thought that Cambrian rocks contained the first and oldest fossil animals, but these are now found in the earlier Ediacaran (Vendian) strata.

Almost every metazoan phylum with hard parts

Fully-armored bodies appeared in the Cambrian, and the resulting new ways of making a living caused a great proliferation of forms at the beginning of the Cambrian. But not trilobites. That form was already present in the Precambrian. And hard parts were present before the Cambrian.

The small shelly fauna or small shelly fossils, abbreviated to SSF, are mineralized fossils, many only a few millimetres long, with a nearly continuous record from the latest stages of the Ediacaran to the end of the Early Cambrian period. They are very diverse, and there is no formal definition of "small shelly fauna" or "small shelly fossils". Almost all are from earlier rocks than more familiar fossils such as trilobites. Since most SSFs were preserved by being covered quickly with phosphate and this method of preservation is mainly limited to the Late Ediacaran and Early Cambrian periods, the animals that made them may actually have arisen earlier and persisted after this time span.

Some of the fossils represent the entire skeletons of small organisms, including the mysterious Cloudina and some snail-like molluscs. However, the bulk of the fossils are fragments or disarticulated remains of larger organisms, including sponges, molluscs, slug-like halkieriids, brachiopods, echinoderms, and onychophoran-like organisms that may have been close to the ancestors of arthropods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_shelly_fauna

Surprise.

The gradual evolution of living things over a billion years, caused several great radiations, the greatest being the Cambrian. But creationists don't want you to realize the Cambrian had no flowers, no birds, no dinosaurs, no scaled fish, no sharks, no snails, no spiders, no trees, no insects, no land organisms, ...(very long list). Almost everything we consider to be "life" happened after the Cambrian.

If there is little evidence of evolutionary ancestors of the Cambrian animals in Precambrian strata,

You've been misled.

Since Darwin's time, the fossil history of life on Earth has been pushed back to 3.5 billion years before the present. Most of these fossils are microscopic bacteria and algae. However, in the latest Proterozoic — a time period now called the Vendian, or the Ediacaran, and lasting from about 650 to 540 million years ago — macroscopic fossils of soft-bodied organisms can be found in a few localities around the world, confirming Darwin's expectations.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/vendian.html

What does this look like?

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/spriggina.gif

Surprise.

There is also little evidence of intermediates of these
animals within the Cambrian rocks.

That's wrong, too. Look here:
http://www.trilobites.info/trends.htm

An amazing evolution and diversification of trilobites over time. Compare this:

A primitive Arachnomorph, Naraoia spinosa, with later, hard-bodied trilobites. A clear transitional.

Professor Jeffrey Levinton says, “The Cambrian explosion was characterized by the sudden and roughly simultaneous appearance of many diverse animal forms almost 600 million years ago. No other period in the history of animal life can match this remarkable burst of evolutionary creativity.â€

The hypothesis is that all these animal groups arose from a common ancestor and diverged at or near the beginning of the Cambrian period, which spans 543 million to 490 million years ago. Evidence is growing to support this hypothesis, at least from evidence derived from fossil occurrences. After that period, very few additional animal phyla, or large animal categories, arose...The hypothesis is that all these animal groups arose from a common ancestor and diverged at or near the beginning of the Cambrian period, which spans 543 million to 490 million years ago. Evidence is growing to support this hypothesis, at least from evidence derived from fossil occurrences. After that period, very few additional animal phyla, or large animal categories, arose...There are groups of organisms that seem to have some major overturns just before the Cambrian. There are also some physical changes on Earth that are well known, but no one can pinpoint the time.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/levinton.html?print

The theory of evolution suggests that throughout history, simple organisms evolved into more complex creatures. However, in the Cambrian, we find that the complex life forms existed right at the beginning.

As you learned, complex life forms preceded the Cambrian; the Ediacaran fauna, for example.

Complex life appeared gradually, and a lot earlier than creationists would like it to have done. But as you now realize almost all of the living things we know about evolved long after the Cambrian.

 

[Vaccine]

Actually we do observe this. Over great periods of time, from say the Cambrian to the Triassic there was massive evolution that took that time to happen.

Can you provide a few examples?


I see Asyncritus and Barbarian may have answered that, and my next question about why the controversy?

Barbarian- Thanks for those links and info. I must be an extreme skeptic. I can look at all those pictures of trilobites, see all the similarities, see how they line them up, and can understand someone would think it is a transitional, but I'm just skeptical of any inferences. It's all based on physical appearance, we don't have any DNA. If loss of functions and traits in the DNA would produce another form of trilobites, is that evolution? Or hybridization? Or rather stabilization?

Meh, I hope I don't offend anyone, but unless it helps medicine today trilobites don't interest me.

 

[Milk-Drops]

Can you provide a few examples?

Sure, I'm going to be busy for a few days, but when I find the time I'll dig up some examples for ya. ;)

I see Asyncritus and Barbarian may have answered that, and my next question about why the controversy?

To be quite honest, there really isn't a controversy. Asyn is pretty much just stirring up dust and posting stuff that barbarian, myself, and a few others have explained to him in the past is either fragmented info or outright false. Asyn is making a copy paste claim that evolution happened rapidly during the "explosion". However biologists understand and have published many papers on how the explosion took place over millions of years and Ghould's explanation of punctuated equilibrium explained this quite well. Once organisms took advantage of newer systems, niches were being filled rapidly and organisms started to isolate themselves off in these niches resulting in rapid specieation. No controversy there.

 

[Vaccine]

Sure, I'm going to be busy for a few days, but when I find the time I'll dig up some examples for ya. ;)

Thanks, and no hurry! I know everyone has a life and putting this together takes time.

 

[Asyncritus]

Sorry MB.

There's no dust here. The Cambrian EXPLOSION is the worst denial of evolution we could conceive.

Barbarian is doing his best to moan that the soft nature of earlier fossils made them difficult to fossilise. That is total tripe, as this quote from wiki shows clearly:

The Cambrian fossil record includes an unusually high number of lagerstätten, which preserve soft tissues.

So nuts to that nonsense.

He's managed to drag up some "pre-Cambrian" fossils. What he doesn't seem to realise is that he now has to account for their existence, and their perfection. There's no evolution there either.

Here's a nasty example:

They've found stromatolites - which are masses of cyanobacterial forms: which differ very little from the cyanobacteria of today!

1 They have chlorophyll: a massively advanced and complex substance, essential to the massively modern and complex process known as photosynthesis. How did these miserable, brainless bacteria figure that one out? Evolution? Absolute bilge.

2 They also have an enzyme system which fixes atmospheric nitrogen.

What? Fixes atmospheric nitrogen???? Haber and Bosch got Nobels for producing a process which does just that. But that was in the late 19th or early 20th century! It took mankind that long to figure out how to do it - at temperatures of 4-800 deg C, and using a variety of specialised catalysts.

But here are these miserable bacteria doing that 700 million years ago! At room temperature and lower! Evolution? Don't make me laugh.

 

[Asyncritus]

Here are some modern and precambrian cyanobacteria. See much difference?

Just to show you that they haven't evolved since, here are 2 pics of them:

fossil cyanobacteria

Sorry, the pic of the modern ones won'tupload. Go here:
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/259/tracking-the-path-of-green-slime

 

[Asyncritus]

And, even more extraordinarily, cyanobacteria appear to have survived relatively unchanged. Schopf says that they do not look appreciably different from the cyanobacteria of two billion years ago. How could cyanobacteria be so untouched by the processes of evolution, when in the same amount of time the rest of life evolved from a single celled organism to the vast range of forms we see today, including our own human species?

http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/259/tracking-the-path-of-green-slime

Evolved? More tripe.

These things were created to perform an absolutely vital function: fix nitrogen, and generate oxygen.

Without them life would be impossible.

But you've got another big problem.

They reproduce now, and they reproduced then. Therefore they have and had DNA.

But DNA cannot be made without FIXED nitrogen. The only nitrogen fixers were the cyanobacteria! So you're in a very nasty circle. How do you square it?

 

[Milk-Drops]

Sorry MB.

There's no dust here. The Cambrian EXPLOSION is the worst denial of evolution we could conceive.

I think you mixed up your wording, considering it sounds like you are saying that the Cambrian explosion is the worst thing to use to deny evolutionary theory. You seem to be hung up on the word explosion, but uncaring about he actual time period, why biologists called it such, and what it actually means for the theory. As I said, kicking up dust over something that doesn't bother biologists but makes those that only glance at articles to find something to fill their conformation biases something to repeat adnosium.

Your trolling is just laughable to me now.

 

[Barbarian]

There's no dust here. The Cambrian EXPLOSION is the worst denial of evolution we could conceive.

As you learned, there are vast numbers of fossils of Ediacarn fauna, with complex bodies, millions of years before the Cambrian. Some of them seem to have survived the development of fully-scleritized bodies (some Precambrian organisms had partially-scleritized bodies,so even that is transitional from earlier times) to produce some of the phyla in the Cambrian.

Barbarian is doing his best to moan that the soft nature of earlier fossils made them difficult to fossilise.

It did make it harder for them to fossilize, but they were distributed around the world in large numbers and so we have many fossils of them from many places in the world. Surprise.

The Cambrian fossil record includes an unusually high number of lagerstätten, which preserve soft tissues.

Most of these were quite similar to the sort of conditions that fossilized soft-bodied organisms in the Precambrian. There is also the "small shelly fauna", bits and pieces of partially-scleritized organisms from the Precambrian, in places where soft-bodied organisms would not have been preserved. Surprise, again.

He's managed to drag up some "pre-Cambrian" fossils.

Millions of them. World-wide.

What he doesn't seem to realise is that he now has to account for their existence, and their perfection.

Hardly perfect. In fact, they changed considerably over time, and into the Cambrian. But there's evidence for that, too. The first fossil cnidarians were small, simple blobs like some jellyfish, and did not move about. From that simple beginning, came all sorts of evolved jellies, corals, swimming cnidarians, etc.

There's no evolution there either.

Surprise.

Here's a nasty example:

They've found stromatolites - which are masses of cyanobacterial forms: which differ very little from the cyanobacteria of today!

Chapter 2 Insights into Cyanobacterial Evolution from Comparative Genomics
Wesley D. Swingley, Robert E. Blankenship and Jason Raymond
Recent high-throughput sequencing has provided DNA sequences at an unprecedented rate, posing considerable analytical challenges, but also offering insight into the genetic mechanisms of adaptation. Here we present a comparative genomics-based approach towards understanding the evolution of these mechanisms in cyanobacteria. Historically, systematic methods of defining morphological traits in cyanobacteria have posed a major barrier in reconstructing their true evolutionary history. The advent of protein, then DNA, sequencing - most notably the use of 16S rRNA as a molecular marker - helped circumvent this barrier and now forms the basis of our understanding of the history of life on Earth. However, these tools have proved insufficient for resolving relationships between closely related cyanobacterial species. The 24 cyanobacteria whose genomes are compared here occupy a wide variety of environmental niches and play major roles in global carbon and nitrogen cycles. By integrating phylogenetic data inferred for hundreds to nearly 1000 protein coding genes common to all or most cyanobacteria, we are able to reconstruct an evolutionary history of the entire phylum, establishing a framework for resolving how their metabolic and phenotypic diversity came about.
http://www.horizonpress.com/cyan

Yet another surprise for you. "Golly, they all look kinda the same" isn't a very smart way of classifying microbes.

1 They have chlorophyll: a massively advanced and complex substance, essential to the massively modern and complex process known as photosynthesis.

Turns out there that plants have, in each of their cells, these little bacteria-like things that contain chloropyll. These little things have their own, bacterial DNA, and reproduce independently of the plant cells, although neither the plant nor these organelles can now live apart from each other. It's called "endosymbiosis." The day is just full of surprises for you, isn't it? And there's more:

Those little endosymbionts (chloroplasts) have the ancestral chlorophyll a, but they have evolved an accessory pigment, chlorophyll b, which is not found in cyanobacteria.

How did these miserable, brainless bacteria figure that one out?

No need. Random mutation and natrural selection. Replace a CH3 group with a CH2OH group. Simple.

Evolution? Absolute bilge.

You're still assuming what you propose to prove.

2 They also have an enzyme system which fixes atmospheric nitrogen.

So do many bacteria and algae. But the system isn't that hard to do:


Front Microbiol. 2011; 2: 205.
An Alternative Path for the Evolution of Biological Nitrogen Fixation
Nitrogenase catalyzed nitrogen fixation is the process by which life converts dinitrogen gas into fixed nitrogen in the form of bioavailable ammonia. The most common form of nitrogenase today requires a complex metal cluster containing molybdenum (Mo), although alternative forms exist which contain vanadium (V) or only iron (Fe). It has been suggested that Mo-independent forms of nitrogenase (V and Fe) were responsible for N2 fixation on early Earth because oceans were Mo-depleted and Fe-rich. Phylogenetic- and structure-based examinations of multiple nitrogenase proteins suggest that such an evolutionary path is unlikely. Rather, our results indicate an evolutionary path whereby Mo-dependent nitrogenase emerged within the methanogenic archaea and then gave rise to the alternative forms suggesting that they arose later, perhaps in response to local Mo limitation. Structural inferences of nitrogenase proteins and related paralogs suggest that the ancestor of all nitrogenases had an open cavity capable of binding metal clusters which conferred reactivity. The evolution of the nitrogenase ancestor and its associated bound metal cluster was controlled by the availability of fixed nitrogen in combination with local environmental factors that influenced metal availability until a point in Earth’s geologic history where the most desirable metal, Mo, became sufficiently bioavailable to bring about and refine the solution (Mo-nitrogenase) we see perpetuated in extant biology.

And again... surprise.

What? Fixes atmospheric nitrogen???? Haber and Bosch got Nobels for producing a process which does just that. But that was in the late 19th or early 20th century!

Actually, we could do it much earlier, but doing it in a way that was cheaper than just using organic fertilizer, that took some time. It was long known how to oxidize elemental nitrogen.