New Support for the View on Cambrian Explosion Being Caused by Rapid Increase of Earth Radius

Abstract

Cambrian explosion during which highly advanced life-forms suddenly emerged is one of the mysteries of biology. Oxygenation of the environment was associated with this event as also a release of methane trapped to a crystal structure of water. Oxygenation made possible the emergence of aerobic respiration and of animals. Stem cells to not however tolerate oxygen. The so called hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) make possible to shift metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic in hypoxic environment. In the case of cancer cells so called HIF-2α allows this also in oxic environment. The geobiologis Emma Hammarlund and tumor biologist Sven Phlman  conjecture that this true also for the ordinary cells. Moreover, they propose that the event induced a genetic change leading to the emergence of what they call HIF-1 as a predecessor of HIF-2α. This allowed the organism to adapt to environments in which oxygen concentration varied so that stem cells survived in high-oxygen environment. The cause of the sudden oxygenation is not discussed in the article. The so called Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) occurred much earlier than Cambrian explosion, and TGD inspired proposal is that this event drove the primitive life forms under the Earth surface to underground oceans. The pre-Cambrian situation would have been very similar to that in recent Mars. Cambrian explosion was induced by a rapid expansion of Earth size with radius increasing by a factor of 2. This led to the formation of cracks and oxygenation of underground oceans which in turn induced rapid evolution of animals from plant like predecessors.