[MCN] 4 of a kind: Life on Earth

[Lance Olsen]

"This process also helps explain the unusually high oceanic 
phosphorus levels, thought to be the catalyst for the origin of 
animal life on Earth."

Explosive underwater volcanoes were a major feature of 'Snowball Earth'
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/uos-euv011516.php
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  "The question is how higher trophic level organisms, such as us, 
will deal with changes in the services that plankton ecosystems 
provide."

Meike Vogt. Adrift in an ocean of change: Rising temperatures and 
ocean acidification drive changes in phytoplankton communities. 
Science 18 DECEMBER 2015 o VOL 350 ISSUE 6267
10.1126/science.aad6946
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"What can be said with assurance is that there is a unique and nearly 
ubiquitous compound, with the empirical formula 
H(2960)O(1480)C(1480)N(16)P(1.8)S called living matter. Its 
synthesis, on an oxidized and uncarboxylated earth, is the most 
intricate feat of chemical engineering ever performed - and the most 
delicate operation that people have ever tampered with."

Edward S. Deevey, Jr. Mineral Cycles. Scientific American, September 1970
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"The energy that sustains all living systems is solar energy ... It 
is solar energy that moves the rabbit, the deer, the whale, the boy 
on the bicycle outside my window, my pencil as I write these words."

George M. Woodwell. "The Energy Cycle of the Biosphere." Scientific 
American, September 1970.




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