More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
my thesis would involve the impact of the ecopoiesis on the native microfauna.
“The impact of the ecopoiesis” was far too broad a subject,
There had long been geological evidence that the surface waters of the ocean had become both more alkaline, and less oxygenated, as new species shifted the balance of dissolved gases.
Some native species must have retreated from the wave of change, and perhaps some had been wiped out completely, but there was a thriving population of zooytes in the upper layers at present. So had they been there all along,...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
My original hypothesis, that freshwater species had replenished the upper ocean, turned out to be false. Zooytes had no genes as such, just families of enzymes that re-synthesized each other after cell division, but comparisons of these heritable molecules showed that, rather than rain bringing new life from above, an ocean-dwelling species from a much greater depth had moved steadily closer to the surface, as the Angels’ creations drained oxygen from the water. That wouldn’t have been much of a surprise, if the same techniques hadn’t also shown that several species found in river water were
...more
Zooytes that had spent a billion years confined to the depths had suddenly been able to survive (and reproduce, and mutate) closer to the surface than ever before, and when they’d stumbled on a mutation that let them thrive in the presence of oxygen, they’d finally been in a position to make use of it. The ecopoiesis might have driven other native organisms into extinction, but the invasion from Earth had enabled this ancient benthic species to mount a long overdue invasion of its own.
So I proved myself wrong, earned my degree, and became famous amongst a circle of peers so small that we were all famous to each other anyway.
“Do you believe in God?”
“As a child I did. Not anymore. It was a nice idea … but it made no sense.”
I said, “Then isn’t life unbearable?” He laughed. “Not all the time.”
