Quote:
Originally Posted by Waxing_Gibbous
As to Conan the Bacterium and his friends: all extremeophiles on earth evolved from earlier organisms which began in much less hostile environments....
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I don't think you can say that. The earliest life evolved before their was any free oxygen. In fact the oxygen we breath is generally accepted to be other life forms waste products. It could well be that the ecosystems that live around the 'black smokers' are much closer to the original life forms. These communities are based on chemo-autotrophic bacteria rather than photosynthesis and use chemicals such as hydrogen sulphide, which is very toxic to us, as a food source.