First Ever Multicellular Animals Found In Oxygen-Free Environment
In the 236 years since oxygen was identified as a life-giving necessity, no scientist anywhere has discovered a multicellular animal capable of living without the stuff. Until now. Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, have discovered three new species that live their entire life in an anoxic pit beneath the Mediterranean Sea. This discovery drastically revises science's understand of where animals can thrive. Prior to this discovery, the only organisms capable of life in oxygen-free environments were viruses and bacteria. Unlike plants, all previously discovered animals, and fungi, the newly discovered animal species don't use mitochondria, the cellular organelle that converts sugar and oxygen into water, CO2 and, energy, to power their cells. Instead, these weird creatures have an organelle that resembles a hydrogenosome, a cellular component used by some microbes to produce energy with complex enzymatic reactions. The organisms themselves, none of which have been named...