![]() ![]() Yet without them we may not be here at all. ![]() Despite this, they have a bad image: after all, bacteria cause many diseases in humans. They thrive in hot, cold, salty, acidic and alkaline environments in which most eukaryotes would perish. Image adapted from: Bobby McKay CC BY ND 2.0īacteria (and archaea) are hardy creatures. The streaky artwork of masses of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). This characteristic is distinctive of bacteria and archaea all other life forms on Earth, including real algae, consist of eukaryotic cells with organelles and with genetic material contained in one place (the nucleus). This basically means that their cells don’t have organelles (tiny structures inside cells that carry out specific functions) and do not have distinct nuclei-their genetic material mixes in with the rest of the cell. Cyanobacteria, and bacteria in general, are prokaryotic life forms. Possible fossil examples have been found in rocks that are around 3500 million years old, in Western Australia.Īlthough commonly referred to as blue-green algae, cyanobacteria are not actually algae. But let’s start with what we know about some of the very first living things on Earth.Ĭyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, started out on Earth quite a while ago. And the fact is, we don’t really know exactly how life arose from inorganic matter all those billions of years ago … and who’s to say that different processes might not have taken place on different planets out there in the universe? Perhaps there are more questions to ask, more possibilities to consider. Everything we know about life comes from a sample size of one: life here on Earth. ![]()
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