# 3.2 billion years ago a huge fertilizer bomb hit the earth #[3.2 billean bliadhna air ais bhuail “boma todhair mòr” an talamh]According to a Reuters report on October 21, a space rock that hit the earth at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago caused a global catastrophe that led to the end of the dinosaurs and many other creatures. But this is far from the largest meteorite to hit the Earth.
A meteorite 200 times larger than the above meteorite hit the earth 3.26 billion years ago, causing even greater global destruction. But as new research shows, the accident may have been beneficial to early evolution, acting as a “giant fertilizer bomb” for the then-dominant bacteria and other organisms. – another cell called archaea – giving them access to key nutrients like phosphorus and iron.
Researchers used evidence from ancient rocks in the Barberton Greenstone Belt in northeastern South Africa to assess the impact of a meteorite impact. They found ample evidence, mainly from geochemical signatures of preserved organic matter, but also from fossils of marine bacterial colonies, that life flourished.
“After taking years to decades for the environment to return to normal, organisms can not only recover quickly, they thrive.”
At that time, in the ancient Archaean era, the Earth was very different from what it is now, and meteorites that hit the Earth were larger and more frequent.
“At that time, the Earth was something like a water world, with a few volcanoes and continental rocks above the water. Basically there was no oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans, and there were no eukaryotic cells,” said Andrew Noor, a musicologist at Harvard University and co-author of the paper.
The meteorite that hit Earth 3.26 billion years ago was a carbonaceous chondrite, which is rich in carbon and also contains phosphorus. Dillavidu Vauban said that its diameter is about 37 to 58 kilometers, which is about 50 to 200 times larger than the asteroid that caused its disappearance.
“The impact of the victory was swift and violent,” said Dilavidu Warbonne. , darkening the sky in hours.”
“It seems that the impact happened in the ocean, which triggered a tsunami that swept across the globe, ripping up the seabed and flooding the coast,” said Dilavidu Warbonne that the atmosphere began to heating, causing the upper layers of the ocean to begin to boil.”
It appears to have taken years to decades for the dust to settle and for the atmosphere to cool enough for water vapor to return to the ocean, said Dilavidu Vabon. Microorganisms that depend on sunlight and those in shallow seas die in large numbers.
But the meteorite brought with it a lot of phosphorus, nutrients for micro-organisms and vital for molecules that play a key role in storing and transmitting genetic information. Tsunamis also mix iron-rich deep water with shallower water, creating an ideal environment for many types of microorganisms because the iron provides an energy source. to them.
“Think of these effects as giant fertilizer bombs,” said Dilavudi Vabon.
“We believe that meteorite impacts are terrible and harmful to life – the best example is the Chicxulub meteorite impact (in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico), which caused not only the dinosaur. on the ground.
“Microbes are relatively simple, changeable, and they reproduce quickly,” said Dilavidu Warbonne.
Evidence of the impact includes the chemical signatures of meteorites, small globular structures formed by the melting of rock after the impact, and large chunks of seafloor mixed with other debris stirred up by the impact. tsunami in sedimentary rocks.
“Early organisms were resilient in the face of large impacts,” said Dilavudi Vauban.
