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Precambrian Surface Temperatures and Molecular Phylogeny

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2017

David Schwartzman
Affiliation:
Department of Biology Howard University, Washington, DC 20059, U.S.A, dws@scs.howard.edu
Charles H. Lineweaver
Affiliation:
Department of Astrophysics and Optics, University of New South Wales, Australian Centre for Astrobiology, Sydney, 2052 Australia, charley@bat.phys.unsw.edu.au

Abstract

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The timing of emergence of major organismal groups is consistent with the climatic temperature being equal to their upper temperature limit of growth (T max ), implying a temperature constraint on the evolution of each group, with the climatic temperature inferred from the oxygen isotope record of marine cherts. Support for this constraint comes from the correlation of T max with the rRNA molecular phylogenetic distance from the last common ancestor (LCA) for both thermophilic Archaea and Bacteria. In particular, this correlation for hyperthermophilic Archaea suggests a climatic temperature of about 120°C at the time of the LCA, likely in the Hadean.

Information

Type
Archaea
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2004