Researchers were shocked to discover an organism that hasn't evolved in nearly 2 billion years, but the finding actually provides further support for Darwin.
These deep-sea microscopic sulfur bacteria reveal a fascinating evolutionary phenomenon, UCLA reported.
"It seems astounding that life has not evolved for more than 2 billion years - nearly half the history of the Earth," said J. William Schopf, the study's lead author and a UCLA professor of earth, planetary and space sciences in the UCLA College. "Given that evolution is a fact, this lack of evolution needs to be explained."
A team of scientists looked at bacteria that had been preserved for 1.8 billion years in Western Australia's coastal waters using state-of-the-art technology, and found they looked exactly the same as those preserved 2.3 billion years ago; both of these sets of bacteria were also indistinguishable from those seen today. Several techniques were used to analyze the bacteria including Raman spectroscopy and confocal lasers.
"The rule of biology is not to evolve unless the physical or biological environment changes, which is consistent with Darwin," Schopf said.
The researchers pointed out that the environment of these deep-sea organisms is one of the few on Earth that has remained largely unchanged over the years.
"These microorganisms are well-adapted to their simple, very stable physical and biological environment," Schopf said. "If they were in an environment that did not change but they nevertheless evolved, that would have shown that our understanding of Darwinian evolution was seriously flawed."
The researchers believe these findings provide significant support for Darwin's work. The findings date back to a time of substantial rises in Earth's oxygen known as the Great Oxidation Event, which also produced dramatic increases in sulfate and nitrate (the only nutrients these organisms would have needed to survive).
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
