{"id":32302,"date":"2016-11-30T00:48:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T08:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/these-2-5-billion-year-old-bacteria-predate-the-rise-of-oxygen-on-earth"},"modified":"2017-06-04T14:00:42","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T21:00:42","slug":"these-2-5-billion-year-old-bacteria-predate-the-rise-of-oxygen-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/these-2-5-billion-year-old-bacteria-predate-the-rise-of-oxygen-on-earth","title":{"rendered":"These 2.5-Billion-Year-Old Bacteria Predate the Rise of Oxygen on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/these-2-5-billion-year-old-bacteria-predate-the-rise-of-oxygen-on-earth.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fossilised bacteria have been uncovered in two separate locations in South Africa, and they\u2019ve been dated to 2.52 billion years ago \u2014 long before oxygen started to saturate Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of thriving in oxygen, like the trees and multicellular organisms that came after them did, these bacteria oxidised sulphur to survive, suggesting that life could be sustained on a planet with less than one-thousandth of a percent of Earth\u2019s current oxygen levels.<\/p>\n<p>The fossils were uncovered in a layer of hard, silica-rich rock in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kaapvaal_Craton\">Kaapvaal Craton<\/a> of the Limpopo Province in South Africa \u2014 one of the two remaining areas in the world where Earth\u2019s crust from 3.6 to 2.5 million years ago is still accessible.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/these-2-5-billion-year-old-fossil-bacteria-predate-the-rise-of-oxygen-on-earth\">http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/these-2&#45;5-billion-year-old-f...n-on-earth<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fossilised bacteria have been uncovered in two separate locations in South Africa, and they\u2019ve been dated to 2.52 billion years ago \u2014 long before oxygen started to saturate Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Instead of thriving in oxygen, like the trees and multicellular organisms that came after them did, these bacteria oxidised sulphur to survive, suggesting that life [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32302"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65676,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32302\/revisions\/65676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}