Reduviasporonites, an Ancient Fungus that Flourished About 250 Million Years Ago Capitalised on a World-Wide Disaster and Thrived on Early Earth

The Original landmass of the Earth; the supercontinent known as Pangaea shown in one of it's configurations.

Long before dinosaurs ruled over the Earth; one large continuous area of land, known as Pangaea that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago encompassed the largest portion of the world's landmass. A single enormous ocean surrounded Pangaea and was known as Panthalassa.The Pangaea theory states that all present continents were once amassed together and collectively known as a 'supercontinent' called Pangaea. The word 'Pangaea' means 'all lands' in Greek, accurately defining the way the continents were 200 millions years ago before it split up.

It was during this period of Earth's past that "geological records show that the Earth experienced a global catastrophe.... "A huge Siberian volcano destroyed the world's forests 250 million years ago in what scientists say was the worst extinction event the planet has ever witnessed, new research has disclosed... It rained fire and acid rain for hundreds of thousands of years and killed 90 percent of all life, including plants and vegetation.... Earth scientist, Prof Mark Sephton, of Imperial College London, said:: "Ironically, the worst imaginable conditions for plant and animal species provided the best possible conditions for the fungi to flourish."

"It created the perfect storm."

He added: "Acid rain fell on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years which killed the trees and plants and allowed the fungus to take over the planet."

"It has been conjectured that "basalt lava flows were unleashed on the continent from a location centred on what is present day Siberia. Up to 96 per cent of all marine species and 70 per cent of land species became extinct. Traditionally, scientists had thought that land plants weathered the catastrophe without much loss.

"Today's findings suggest that much of the vegetation on Pangaea did not survive and that the world's forests were wiped out, according to the researchers. Geological records show that there was a massive spike in the population of Reduviasporonites across Pangea as the Permian period came to an end. The scientists suggest that this means that there was in increase in the supply of wood for them to decay.

"The tiny organisms that covered the planet more than 250 million years ago appear to be a species of ancient fungus that thrived in dead wood, according to new research published October 1 in the journal Geology.

"The researchers behind the study, from Imperial College London and other universities in the UK, USA and The Netherlands, believe that the organisms were able to thrive during this period because the world's forests had been wiped out. This would explain how the organisms, which are known as Reduviasporonites, were able to proliferate across the planet.

"Researchers had previously been unsure as to whether Reduviasporonites were a type of fungus or algae. By analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of the fossilised remains of the microscopic organisms, the scientists identified them as a type of wood-rotting fungus that would have lived inside dead trees."

"The team reached their conclusions by analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of Reduviasporonites under state of the art microscopes and comparing the results with those from modern fungi.

They discovered that Reduviasporonites and modern fungi show similar chemical characteristics."

"Fossil records of Reduviasporonites reveal chains of microscopic cells and reflect an organism that lived during the Permian-Triassic period."

An enlarged image of Reduviasporonites. Scientists believe extinct fungus species capitalised on a world-wide disaster and thrived on early Earth. 

(Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London)

 "Professor Mark Sephton, one of the authors of the study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, comments: "Our study shows that neither plant nor animal life escaped the impact of this global catastrophe. Ironically, the worst imaginable conditions for plant and animal species provided the best possible conditions for the fungi to flourish."

"The team suggest that the basalt lava, which flowed during Permian-Triassic catastrophe, unleashed toxic gases into the air. The gases had a dual effect, producing acid rain and depleting the ozone layer. The outcome was the destruction of forests, providing enough rotting vegetation to nourish Reduviasporonites so that they could proliferate across Pangaea.

"The team reached their conclusions by analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of Reduviasporonites using a High Sensitivity Mass Spectrometer and comparing the results with those from modern fungi. They discovered that Reduviasporonites and modern fungi show similar chemical characteristics."

Although there are a number of scientists who do not agree and remain skeptical of scientists who claim that they have identified an ancient fungus that flourished about 250 million years ago, feeding on dead trees as it spread across the planet. Those remains point to a crucial clue that some believe to equate with the identity of what killed off much of Earth's plant and animal life at the time.

Scientists Mark A. Sephton, Henk Visscher, Cindy V. Looy, Alexander B. Verchovsky, and Jonathan S. Watson.believe: "One of the most controversial biological proxies of environmental crisis at the close of the Permian is the organic microfossil Reduviasporonites. The proliferation of this disaster species coincides with the mass extinction and numerous geochemical disturbances. Originally Reduviasporonites was assigned to fungi, opportunistically exploiting dying end-Permian forests, but subsequent geochemical data have been used to suggest an algal origin. We have used high-sensitivity equipment, partly designed to detect interstellar grains in meteorites, to reexamine the geochemical signature of Reduviasporonites. Organic chemistry, carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and carbon/nitrogen ratios are consistent with a fungal origin. The use of this microfossil as a marker of terrestrial ecosystem collapse should not be merely discounted. Unequivocally diagnostic data, however, may have been precluded by post-burial replacement of its organic constituents."

"The team analyzed carbon and nitrogen isotopes from samples of Reduviasporonites. As the researchers report today in Geology, those analyses identified chemicals unique to Reduviasporonites, whose reign spanned the Permian and Triassic periods, and other compounds associated with dead tree matter, within the same microfossils. Astrobiologist and lead author Mark Sephton of Imperial College London says the analyses show that the organism fed on dead wood. In addition, he notes, the Reduviasporonites microfossils have been found in sediments deposited at the P-Tr boundary all across what was then Pangaea. "This suggests that we are looking at something truly global in effect."

"Sephton explains that for Reduviasporonites to be so common at the P-Tr boundary, they must have thrived on a disaster that brought about "a dramatic change in the environment." The most likely cause, he says, is a massive release of sulfur dioxide and other noxious gases from volcanic eruptions. Those gases would have caused highly acidified rain, enough to poison most of the planet, killing trees and creating a global feast for Reduviasporonites. "When things turned really bad," Sephton says, "they were most at home."

"It's a good story if it turns out to be true, says paleontologist C. Kevin Boyce of the University of Chicago in Illinois. The analyses of the carbon isotopes provide the "strongest evidence" of a fungal lifestyle for Reduviasporonites, he says. They do "a much better job than previous work" in identifying components of Reduviasporonites versus bits of organic matter from fossilized dead trees. So was Reduviasporonites a fungus? "Maybe," Boyce says. "What [the team's] work does is at least reopen that door."



Citations: Mark A. Sephton, Henk Visscher, Cindy V. Looy, Alexander B. Verchovsky, and Jonathan S. Watson. Chemical constitution of a Permian-Triassic disaster species. Geology, October 2009; v. 37; no. 10; DOI: 10.1130/G30096A.1; Geology, October 2009 v. 37 no. 10 p. 875-878. Telegraph.co.uk: Published: 12:08PM BST 01 Oct 2009.

The God Spot, Biology, Evolution, and Religious Belief

Linköpings domkyrka, the Medieval cathedral at Linköping, Sweden.

Brandon Keim writes on David Barash's perspective that "religion should not be immune from evolutionary analysis," and "whether or not one is a believer," Barash "(that) the popularity of religious belief should be considered in terms of the benefits such convictions have historically conveyed. Weighing the pros and commons, however, is a difficult task," Barash freely admits.

"On the one hand, religious belief of one sort or another seems ubiquitous, suggesting that it might well have emerged, somehow, from universal human nature, the common evolutionary background shared by all humans. On the other hand, it often appears that religious practice is fitness-reducing rather than enhancing — and, if so, that genetically mediated tendencies toward religion should have been selected against. Think of the frequent advocacy of sexual restraint, of tithing, of self-abnegating moral duty and other seeming diminutions of personal fitness, along with the characteristic denial of the “evidence of our senses” in favor of faith in things asserted but not clearly demonstrated. What fitness-enhancing benefits of religion might compensate for those costs? [...]" Keim summarizes Barash.

Keim contrasts Barash's perspective with that of noted evolutionary biologist, David Sloan Wilson. "Not all biologically based hypotheses for the evolution of religion are negative, however. In Darwin’s Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson explored the possibility that religious belief is advantageous for its practitioners because it contributes to solidarity — including but not limited to moral codes — that benefits the group and wouldn’t otherwise be within reach. That notion, appealing as it might be, is actually a logical and mathematical stretch for most biologists, relying as it does upon group selection. The problem is that even if groups displaying a particular trait do better than groups lacking it, selection acting within such groups should favor individuals who “cheat.” Mathematical models have shown that group selection can work in theory, but only if the differential survival of religious groups more than compensates for any disadvantage suffered by individuals within each group. It is at least possible that human beings meet this requirement, especially when it comes to religion, since within-group self-policing could maintain religiosity; it certainly did during the Inquisition.".

"Barash makes some interesting points," Keim contends, "though glib comments like "it certainly did during the Inquisition" make it difficult to read him without suspicion.".

"A more interesting example of self-policing religious groups," Keim explains, "is American evangelicals, many sects of which have maintained internal order in the absence of thumbscrews and racks.".

Keim believes: "Barash is quick to dismiss the supposed benefits of religion or the possibility that many people need it.  But is it so difficult to imagine the appeal of worldviews capable of explaining life and death and right and wrong? Or so difficult to see the social framework — both in terms of human interaction and the provision of goods and services — that religious communities provide, particularly in poor and undeveloped regions?"

"Finally, Keim explains that "group selection is hardly a theoretical: the animal world is full of species that have developed characteristics that operate on the group rather than individual, and are thus selected at that level. Bacteria and parasites, for instance, often produce effects in their hosts that are only seen when  the invaders are present in large numbers."

"Religion can and should be studied in scientific terms," according to Keim's "reading but those studies need to operate on many scales and be framed in a way that doesn’t predetermine the answer according to already-held sentiments. If framed by narrow perspectives like Barash’s, they will not likely illuminate either religion or ourselves."

 

Neural activation produced by God’s perceived love (left) and anger (right)/PNAS

"Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn’t require divinely dedicated neurological wiring," writes Brandon Keim.

"Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling."

"The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don’t explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question."

“In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief,” said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We’re only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated.”

"Though scientific debate about God’s existence has transfixed the public, Grafman’s findings fit into a lesser known argument over why religion exists."

"Some scientists think it’s just an accidental byproduct of social cognition. They say humans evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren’t present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings."

"Others argue that religion is too pervasive to be just a byproduct. Historically, at least, it must have provided believers and their communities some sort of advantage, or else it would have disappeared."

"The argument breaks down into the so-called byproduct and adaptation camps. Of course, they might both be right."

“Religious beliefs might have arisen as a byproduct,” said Justin Barrett, an Oxford University specialist in the cognitive neuroscience of religion, “but once in place, they’re pretty handy.”

"Grafman started by interviewing 26 people of varying religious sentiments, breaking down their beliefs into three psychological categories: God’s perceived level of involvement in the world, God’s perceived emotions, and religious knowledge gained through doctrine or experience. Then they submitted statements based on these categories to 40 people hooked to fMRI machines."

"Statements based on God’s involvement — such as “God protects one’s life” or “Life has no higher purpose” — provoked activity in brain regions associated with understanding intent. Statements of God’s emotions — such as “God is forgiving” or “the afterlife will be punishing” — stimulated regions responsible for classifying emotions and relating observed actions to oneself. Knowledge-based statements, such as “a source of creation exists” or “religions provide moral guidance,” activated linguistic processing centers."

"Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."

"The advantages of a Theory of Mind are clear. People who lack one are considered developmentally challenged, even disabled. Anthropologist Scott Atran, a proponent of the byproduct hypothesis, has suggested that it let our ancestors quickly distinguish between friends and enemies. And once humans were able to imagine someone who wasn’t physically present, supernatural beliefs soon followed."

"But just as a Theory of Mind provided benefits, so might its supernatural byproducts and the religions that grew from them."

"Unlike other animals, humans can imagine the future, including their own death. The hope given by religious beliefs to people confronting their own mortality might provide motivation to care for their offspring."

"Supernatural beliefs may also have produced group-level advantages that then conferred benefits to individuals."

“You get some selective advantages, such as inter-group cooperation and self-policing morality,” said Barrett. “And maybe the entire network of belief practices, and whatever is behind them, gets reinforced.”

"According to Barrett, religion may even have created a feedback loop, refining the Theory of Mind that produced it."

“It could be that when you’re in a religious community, it improves what psychologists call perspective-taking,” he said. “Exercising your Theory of Mind could be good for developing it, making your reasoning more robust.”

"David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, said the findings fit with the idea that religion started as a cognitive byproduct and became a cultural adaptation, but cautioned against over-interpreting them."

“It’s tremendous to see religious belief manifested at the neurological level,” he said. “But there’s a sense that when you bring things down to that level, that trumps other kinds of understanding. That’s not true in this case.”

"Grafman declined to speculate, instead concentrating on what he hopes to achieve with future research: studying other kinds of religions than were represented in his small sample size, and comparing religious cognition to legal and political certainties."

“The differences and nuances between these types of belief systems will be important to understanding the deliberation that goes on,” he said.

"Grafman also stressed that the study examined only the nature of religion, not the existence of God."

“He, or She, didn’t come in for the evaluation,” he said.

Citation: “Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron Barbey, Michael Su, Giovanna Zamboni, Frank Krueger, and Jordan Grafman. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 10, March 9, 2009.

Possible "God regions" in the human brain denoted by blue dots

"Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence."

"In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution."

“The main point is that all these brain regions are important for other forms of social cognition and behavior,” said" Jordan Grafman, a National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist.

"In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science ONE, Grafman’s team used an MRI to measure the brains areas in 40 people of varying degrees of religious belief."

"People who reported an intimate experience of God, engaged in religious behavior or feared God, tended to have larger-than-average brain regions devoted to empathy, symbolic communication and emotional regulation. The research wasn’t trying to measure some kind of small “God-spot,” but looked instead at broader patterns within the brains of self-reported religious people."

"The results are full of caveats, from a small sample size to the focus on a western God. But they fit with Grafman’s earlier work on how religious sentiment triggers other neural networks involved in social cognition."

That research, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggested that the capacity for religious thought may have bootstrapped a primitive human brain into its current, socially sophisticated form.

"Grafman suspects that the origins of divine belief reside in mechanisms that evolved in order to help primates understand family members and other animals. “We tried to use the same social mechanisms to explain unusual phenomena in the natural world,” he said.

"The evolution of our brains continues," said Grafman. “The way we think now is not the way we thought 3,000 years ago,” he said. “The nature of how we believe might change as well.”

Find the God Spot!

"You can forget about the "God spot" that headline writers love to highlight (as in "‘God spot' is found in Brain" or "Scientists Locate ‘God Spot' in Human Brain"). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot."
 

"There isn't a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. "It's not like there's a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God. When you look at religious and spiritual experiences, they are incredibly rich and diverse. Sometimes people find them on the emotional level, sometimes on an ideological level, sometimes they perceive a oneness, sometimes they perceive a person. It depends a lot on what the actual experience is."

"The image above shows two different brain scans, one from someone who is singing, and the other one from someone who is speaking in tongues. They look almost entirely identical, but you can just about glimpse a slight difference in blood flow to the frontal lobe, and specifically to the left caudate, among the "speaking in tongues" brains."
 


Citation: “Neuroanatomical Variability of Religiosity.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron K. Barbey, Michael Su, Frank Krueger, Jordan Grafman. Public Library of Science ONE, Vol. 4 No. 9, September 28, 2009. Reuters News Agency and The NeuroCritic Blog that provided the brain scan imagery.

10/03/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release October 3, 2009

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama Explains

How Health Insurance Reform Will Strengthen America’s Small Businesses

WASHINGTON – "In this week’s address, President Barack Obama spoke of how the rising costs of health care are stifling America’s small businesses, and how reform will strengthen these businesses and the economy. Small businesses create roughly half of all new jobs, but they also pay up to 18 percent more for the very same insurance plans as larger businesses. Too many have been forced to cut benefits, drop coverage, shed jobs, or shut their doors entirely. Health insurance reform is integral to laying a new foundation for our economy so that small businesses can grow and create new jobs."

read the transcript

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3RD, 2009 AT 12:00 AM
Weekly Address: Health Reform Urgent for the Economy
Posted by Jesse Lee

"The President discusses ongoing efforts to spur job creation. He also explains why health insurance reform is needed not just for long-term economic stability, but in the immediate future, discussing statistics on how costs will continue to skyrocket and hurt small businesses even next year."

President Obama shown waiting to give his 10/03/09 Weekly Radio Address

White House Photo, Samantha Appleton

All material used in this post provided by The White House 

The Anemic Left Gets a Hero: Rep. Alan Grayson (D FL)

With the Congressman Alan Grayson "controversy" still the talk around Washington, the 'left wing' media; namely the corporate controlled MSNBC cable network, continues to talk about the 'spinning story' around Representative Grayson's comments on the House floor as the vast right wing echo chamber drills its talking points into the minds of anyone who will listen



"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed calls for Representative Alan Grayson to apologize for his recent “die quickly” remarks on the House floor, though she did say both Republicans and Democrats could do their part to elevate the discussion in the health care debate.

"At her weekly news conference on Thursday, Ms. Pelosi also pointed out that Republicans in the House had used the death theme in criticizing the Democrats’ health care proposals.

“There’s no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize. If anybody is going to apologize, everybody should apologize,” Mrs. Pelosi said. “But let’s — the point has been made. It’s time for us to talk about health care.”

"Meanwhile, House Republicans announced that no resolution admonishing Mr. Grayson would be introduced on Thursday. At his weekly news conference, the House Republican leader, John Boehner, said, “I think it’s time for Democrat leaders and the Speaker of the House herself to rein in some of the rhetoric that she decried just several weeks ago. And if he’s not going to apologize to the American people and to Republicans as he should, really, the Democrat leadership’s responsibility to have a conversation with her own member. ”

"The row over Mr. Grayson began on Tuesday night, when the Democrat took to the House floor to say “If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.”

"In the aftermath of the recent admonishment of Republican Representative Joe Wilson for his outburst against President Obama, Republicans quickly called on Mr. Grayson to apologize. But the freshman from Florida not only refused, he kept the provocative comments coming.

"On a Wednesday appearance with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, for example, Mr. Grayson said, “We’re dealing with people on the other side who are utterly unscrupulous. These are foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who know nothing but ‘no.’”

"In a statement announcing that no resolution was forthcoming, a spokesman for Representative Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, said that Mr. Grayson’s remarks on the floor “were an embarrassment to this Congress.” But, the statement added, “any future decision on a resolution will rest on the ability of the Speaker to control her members.”

"For their part, Democrats have also pointed to similar comments made by Republicans in discussing the health care proposals. Over the summer, for example, Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, another member of the Florida delegation, said that the Democrats’ health care bill “essentially said to America’s seniors: ‘drop dead.’ ”

On Thursday, in assessing Representative Alan Grayson's remarks, Hardball's Chris Matthews kept the story spinning when he invited Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D FL) and Dan Lungren (R CA)to go tit for tat.



Also on Thursday, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann invited Ariana Huffington to reprise the last days events involving Rep. Alan Grayson's comments on the Republican health care plan on 9/30/09.



Will there be another day's worth of story spinning left for Friday? And have the Democrats found a hero who might give them some pugnaciousness as they attempt to bring health care reform?

Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) Describes Republican Health Care Plan: 1. Don't Get Sick; 2. And if you do get sick... 3. Die Quickly. He also Crtically Offers an Apology not to Republicans but "to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,"

CBSNEWS reported that: "Democratic Representative Alan Grayson of Florida, who has come under fire from Republicans for suggesting on the House floor Tuesday night that "Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick," said in an interview with CBSNews.com Wednesday that the response to his comments has been "overwhelmingly positive."

"People are calling us from all over the country to congratulate us for telling the truth," he said. "People are happy to see a Democrat with guts."

"Asked if he expected Republicans to put forward a resolution of disapproval criticizing him for his comments, Grayson said he expected that it would happen, though he is "quite sure it won't pass." Rep. Tom Price of Georgia has drafted a resolution rapping Grayson for "a breach of decorum and degraded the integrity and proceedings of the House," though he has not yet introduced it.

"A resolution like that doesn't save one human being's life," Grayson said, arguing that it instead will give people reason to focus "yet again on the fact that the other side is incapable of even coming up with an alternative" to Democrats' health care reform efforts.

"A similar resolution of disapproval criticizing Republican Rep. Joe Wilson for yelling "you lie!" during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress was passed earlier this month.

"Asked his position on that resolution, Grayson said the two situations are "not the same thing."

"I don't know how anybody can equate what I said on the floor…with rudely interrupting the president," he said.

"In response to Republican calls for him to apologize for his initial comments, Grayson was defiant on the House floor Wednesday afternoon, offering an apology not to Republicans but "to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America," a reference to Congress' inability to pass a health care reform bill." But Grayson's 'apology' pointedly based his remorse for his statement against the GOP not in the form of an olive branch to his political rivals but as a way to highlight and cast even more blame against Republican insensitivity for health care reform that has been brought to light by the results of  "a Harvard study," that devastatingly makes it known to the American people that "more than 44,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance."  

"Grayson said in the interview Wednesday that "no one, other that these Republicans who are desperate to change the subject, has asked me to apologize."

"The freshman Orlando-area representative, who hails from a swing district and is reportedly being targeted by Republicans in the 2010 election, said he is not worried that his opponents will use the controversy against him.

"No one's drumming me out of office. I beat a forth-term Republican incumbent [in 2008]," he said.

"I'm not going anywhere," Grayson added. "I don't even have an opponent yet."

Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL)