Some Schmo wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:41 pm
OK Gunnar, upon further reflection, I have another question for you.
We know that animal feces is used for plant fertilizer. Does that make plants animal-based? We sort of end up with a chicken and egg thing here (if you ignore that fertilizer is not the same thing as food... so not really, but I think you see what I'm driving at).
Point is, it's all part of the circle of life, biological interconnectivity, and my point about everything being indirectly everything-based. Life is a huge molecule stew.
I don't deny any of that, but I think most biologists would agree that the earliest plant species appeared before the earliest species that fit the prevailing definitions of "animal." On the other hand,
earliest living organisms on earth
were probably not plants either, by currently prevailing definitions of "plant."
Archaea may have been the earliest form of life on Earth. They live in extreme environments such as hot springs and deep sea vents. The conditions in these environments resemble conditions that existed early in the Earth's history. Stromatolites are layered structures of sediments that form in shallow bodies of waters.
But I suspect you already knew that, at least as well as I do. I suppose it is possible that primitive organisms that we might call "proto-animals" that could have subsisted on these earliest living organisms could have emerged even before true plants were available to feed them.
I remember a time decades ago when I was still in elementary school when biologists relegated all life to just two kingdoms--plant and animal, and everything that wasn't animal was some kind of plant. Now we know that is way too simplistic.
But, are we in danger of getting too off-topic here?
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
