For approximately 3 Billion years evolution operated on a mostly single-cell basis, but then something strange happened approximately 500 millions years ago. A sudden development of multi-cellular creatures that eventually led to man. What caused that change and the resulting rapid rise of multi-cellular life? This is the essence of Darwin's Dilemma. Don E. Canfield, Simon W. Poulton, and Guy M. Narbonne have just published a paper that advances a theory to solve at least some of that dilemma. The paper titled "Late-Neoproterozoic Deep-Ocean Oxygenation and the Rise of Animal Life" ties a sudden increase in oxygen in the worlds oceans to the rise of the first known members of the Ediacara biota and that a "a prolonged stable oxic environment may have permitted the emergence of bilateral motile animals some 25 million years later"
Fascinating stuff, I'm following it over at the PhysOrg forums…
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