armchair general,
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My last post started me thinking. We've got this wonderful ozone layer that blocks all of the most harmful UV and most of the rest. But before the development of photosynthesis, there was virtually no oxygen present, correct? So, no oxygen, no ozone. No ozone, and UV-B and C come through in full strength. So how did organisms survive this radiation onslaught? Especially the ones that started up photosynthesis. They would have to be right out in the sunlight, so they would need some pretty potent defenses, I would think.
(edit) Just noticed, this is my 999th post. Cool.
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simpler organisms are rather more resistant to radiation than complex ones (wow, that was way too much alliteration there.
).
in fact, there's one organism- a bacteria- that can survive 1.5 million rads of radiation, which is over 3,000x what humans can handle.