by Jamie — Long, long ago, some two bil­lion years, when earth­lings were rep­re­sented solely by prokary­otes, there ex­isted dense mi­cro­bial mats, bustling with ac­tiv­ity and with meta­bolic so­phis­ti­ca­tion to match the most ad­vanced en­gi­neer­ing of eu­kary­otic me­trop­o­lises of to­day. In­cluded in the mats were many types of bac­te­ria along­side their "odd­ball" brethren, mem­bers of the Ar­chaea fam­ily. Like any com­plex com­mu­nity of en­ti­ties with...