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Step into your new, microscopic time machine. Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered that a type of single-celled organism living in modern-day oceans may have a lot in common with life forms that existed billions of years ago--and that fundamentally transformed the planet.
The new research, which will appear Jan. 6 in the journal
Science Advances, is the latest to probe the lives of what may be nature's hardest working microbes: cyanobacteria.
These single-celled, photosynthetic organisms, also known as "blue-green algae," can be found in almost any large body of water today. But more than 2 billion years ago, they took on an extra important role in the history of life on Earth: During a period known as the "Great Oxygenation Event," ancient cyanobacteria produced a sudden, and dramatic, surge in oxygen gas.