From: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org (alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest) To: ammf-digest@smoe.org Subject: alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V14 #3690 Reply-To: ammf@fruvous.com Sender: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest Tuesday, March 3 2020 Volume 14 : Number 3690 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Say goodbye to your chiropractors and medicines? ["SoniPad" Subject: Say goodbye to your chiropractors and medicines? Say goodbye to your chiropractors and medicines? http://projecterhalki.us/izeJT4pAYz_b4MoQJ51jHgy5M5VzXWlncFxLBnPFNGxWTg http://projecterhalki.us/aq5_FMFfJYsPCNTMiWbrdnTLPC_yg2stRJKJ29brVM8nZA The large coal deposits of the Carboniferous may owe their existence primarily to two factors. The first of these is the appearance of wood tissue and bark-bearing trees. The evolution of the wood fiber lignin and the bark-sealing, waxy substance suberin variously opposed decay organisms so effectively that dead materials accumulated long enough to fossilise on a large scale. The second factor was the lower sea levels that occurred during the Carboniferous as compared to the preceding Devonian period. This promoted the development of extensive lowland swamps and forests in North America and Europe. Based on a genetic analysis of mushroom fungi, it was proposed that large quantities of wood were buried during this period because animals and decomposing bacteria and fungi had not yet evolved enzymes that could effectively digest the resistant phenolic lignin polymers and waxy suberin polymers. They suggest that fungi that could break those substances down effectively only became dominant towards the end of the period, making subsequent coal formation much rarer. The Carboniferous trees made extensive use of lignin. They had bark to wood ratios of 8 to 1, and even as high as 20 to 1. This compares to modern values less than 1 to 4. This bark, which must have been used as support as well as protection, probably had 38% to 58% lignin. Lignin is insoluble, too large to pass through cell walls, too heterogeneous for specific enzymes, and toxic, so that few organisms other than Basidiomycetes fungi can degrade it. To oxidize it requires an atmosphere of greater than 5% oxygen, or compounds such as peroxides. It can linger in soil for thousands of years and its toxic breakdown products inhibit decay of other substances. One possible reason for its high percentages in plants at that time was to provide protection from insects in a world containing very effective insect herbivores (but nothing remotely as effective as modern plant eating insects) and probably many fewer protective toxins produced naturally by plants than exist today. As a result, undegraded carbon built up, resulting in the extensive burial of biologically fixed carbon, leading to an increase in oxygen levels in the atmosphere; estimates place the peak oxygen content as high as 35%, as compared to 21% today. This oxygen level may have increased wildfire activity. It also may have promoted gigantism of insects and amphibians b creatures that have been constrained in size by respiratory systems that are limited in their physiological ability to transport and distribute oxygen at the lower atmospheric concentrations that have since been available. In eastern North America, marine beds are more common in the older part of the period than the later part and are almost entirely absent by the late Carboniferous. More diverse geology existed elsewhere, of course. Marine life is especially rich in crinoids and other echinoderms. Brachiopods were abundant. Trilobites became quite uncommon. On land, large and diverse plant populations existed. Land vertebrates included large amphibians ------------------------------ End of alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V14 #3690 **********************************************