Re: Primary events in the history of life

In article <1149732702.129957.236690@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Martin <mgcqso@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Greetings folks. This is my first time here. I'd like to get a little
feedback on something. I need to identify the ten (or so) primary
events in the history of life. The list that I've come up with is:


Hominids
Flowering plants
Vertebrates
Land life
Multicellularity (animals, plants, fungi)
Complex phytoplankton (sex)
Eukaryotic cell (cell nucleus)
Oxygenic cyanobacteria (oxygen atmosphere, primitive ecosystems)
Protocell (Prokaryotes)
Organic molecules

Any suggestions on what to add or subtract?

Kind of anthropocentric, don't you think? If we were clams, we'd find
your top four levels unimportant. If we were beetles, of which there
are gazillions of species, an incredibly successful taxon, the top
three levels would be meaningless. Bacteria, and Archaea, which are
truly omnipresent, from the top of the atmosphere to kilometers below
the surface, and in locations where nothing else can survive, might
figure it all went downhill with the eukaryotes, or even with
chlorophyll.

Victorian science had a concept of The Great Chain of Being, with all
life arranged in an ascending ladder with Homo sapiens at the top, the
culmination of evolution. While powerfully appealing, it's hardly
objective.

This is pretty important to me. Aside from soliciting casual comments,
I would be willing to pay a consulting fee to get a more careful
answer. This wouldn't be a big job, maybe a few hours. (I'm assuming
some of us here have PhD's.)

I'd leave hominids off the top. An argument for vertebrates is that
all large land animals and most large marine species are vertebrates.
While flowering plants are prominent features of most modern land
ecosystems, there were quite elaborate ecosystems long before they
arose.

I think you'll have to define exactly what you mean by "primary event".
It would help if we knew the purpose of your list.

I could make some comments about the terminology and how to divide up
the lower levels of your scheme, but I'll leave that to some of the
actual Ph.Ds here.

I hope these casual comments help.
.

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