Credit...Biophoto Associates/Science Source
The New York Times has an article about oceanic turnover from brachiopods to mollusks which occurred throughout the Paleozoic. During the Cambrian and the Ordovician, brachiopods ruled the sea floor. By the Devonian, much of the diversity of brachiopods had disappeared. In the current oceans, brachiopods are rarely found. They have been replaced by bi-valved mollusks. A paper in the journal Trends in Ecology proposes that the collapse of the brachiopod empire was not a fight between brachiopods and their molliuskian cousins, but just another battle in the struggle that has always defined life: the quest for phosphorus.
“Phosphorus was stolen by the vertebrates, the bony fishes,” said Petr Kraft, a paleontologist at Charles University in the Czech Republic and an author of the new report. “And once this happened, they diversified quickly and took over.” Dr. Kraft collaborated with Michal Mergl of the University of West Bohemia.
The research is part of a renaissance of phosphate studies, an enterprise that spans disciplines and time frames. Chemists are exploring how phosphates managed to season the prebiotic broth that gave rise to life in the first place, while materials scientists are manipulating the element into startling new colors and forms.
“If you heat phosphorus under different conditions, different temperatures, different pressures, strange things start to happen,” Andrea Sella, a professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London, said. “You get red fibrous forms, metallic black forms, purple forms.” You can also stack up layers of phosphorus atoms and then pull them apart into ultrathin and flexible sheets called phosphorenes, all with the goal of controlling the flow of electrons and light particles on which technology depends. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what this element can do,” Dr. Sella said.
