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by nkuttler 1099 days ago
> Newly discovered biomarker signatures point to a whole range of previously unknown organisms that dominated complex life on Earth about a billion years ago.
2 comments

Once upon a time, Marty McFly went back in time and people didn't know what a re-run was.

Fast forward back to the future and it's now 2023 and I ask my 15 year old niece if she knows what a re-run is and she doesn't have a clue.

It's wild to think that things that dominated every day life to the point that not knowing about them would be comical in a mainstream movie have now become unknown again. She also didn't know about yellow pages or AOL cds, but she knew of VCRs and has seen but never used a floppy disk.

These organisms dominated life and we didn't even know they existed. I wonder what AOL CDs existed in the 1800s or 1700s or 300s or -1700s. We see their tools and clay tablets and jewelry and crap, but what games or toys or other things are just gone after being ubiquitous?

Anyway, it's neat to learn about a whole world that once existed on this same planet.

What a great comment.

I recall reading not that long ago something about some condiment that was apparently on every public eating table in 18th England. Yet (as I recall the story) virtually nothing is known about what the condiment actually was. It was so ordinary yet unremarkable, there’s like only a single surviving written reference to it. And that reference was something like, “is there even anything to be said about the humble table jar?” And in retrospect, yes, there was!

>> Newly discovered biomarker signatures point to a whole range of previously unknown organisms that dominated complex life on Earth about a billion years ago.

Why did you pull that quote? The interesting thing is that they confirmed the theory that the intermediate products in an important Eukaryotic biochemical pathway were the end products a billion years ago.

> The interesting thing

The interesting thing to you

> The interesting thing to you

And the author of the article. And the scientists in it. The quote you pulled is barely more informative than the existing headline.

I'm not sure why you're trying to make a point. HN has a voting system, you could just have provided the "better" quote and be done with it.
I thought it was pretty interesting