Page 32 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

The stromatolite fossil record is exceedingly rich, and
they have been around in various environments on Earth
for some four billion years. They were initially discovered
in Shark Bay, Australia in 1956. They are also found in

the Bahamas, the Indian Ocean, Africa and the USA.

The giant activities of cyanobacteria, those marvelous micro-orga-

nisms:

3
• Cyanobacteria by themselves produce 30% of the Earth’s annual amount of oxygen ; that fi-
gure is equivalent to the amount produced by all the green plants on Earth.

• These bacteria are very small in size, but their production is enormous. There are more than
100 of them in a liter of water, and they account for 10% to 20% of the productivity of the oce-
ans. Despite being invisible, they predominate over a large part of the Earth.

• This form of bacterium is capable of performing very different processes (such as pho-
tosynthesis, nitrogen fixation (the process whereby nitrogen is turned into a form usable by li-

ving things) and respiration, within a single cell. This requires a matchless cell membrane
system, as outlined above. For example, the bacteria need an oxygen-free environment for nit-
rogen fixation, but an oxygen-rich environment for all the other processes, and these require
very different cell membranes. This architecture makes cyanobacteria one of the most complex
members of the bacterial kingdom. 4

5
• In 1980, cyanobacteria were observed to possess a “circadian” clock. A circadian clock is
the automatic regulation of the body according to its external environment, seen in multi-celled

organisms. Cyanobacteria have been observed to engage in photosynthesis and respiration by
absorbing oxygen into their cells for 12 hours a day, while they perform nitrogen fixation for
the other 12 hours.

30 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4