A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [254]
19 “A few other carbonaceous chondrites . . .” Nature, “Life's Sweet Beginnings?” December 20–27, 2001, p. 857, and Earth, “Life's Crucible,” February 1998, p. 37.
20 “at the very fringe of scientific respectability . . .” Gribbin, In the Beginning, p. 78.
21 “suggested that our noses evolved . . .” Gribbin and Cherfas, p. 190.
22 “Wherever you go in the world . . .” Ridley, Genome, p. 21.
23 “We can't be certain that what you are holding . . .” Victoria Bennett interview, Australia National University, Canberra, August 21, 2001.
24 “full of noxious vapors . . .” Ferris, Seeing in the Dark, p. 200.
25 “the most important single metabolic innovation . . .” Margulis and Sagan, p. 78.
26 “Our white cells actually use oxygen . . .” Note provided by Dr. Laurence Smaje.
27 “But about 3.5 billion years ago . . .” Wilson, The Diversity of Life, p. 186.
28 “This is truly time traveling . . .” Fortey, Life, p. 66.
29 “the slowest-evolving organisms on Earth . . .” Schopf, p. 212
30 “Animals could not summon up the energy to work,” Fortey, Life, p. 89.
31 “nothing more than a sludge of simple microbes.” Margulis and Sagan, p. 17.
32 “you could pack a billion . . .” Brown, The Energy of Life, p. 101.
33 “Such fossils have been found just once . . .” Ward and Brownlee, p. 10.
34 “little more than ‘bags of chemicals'. . .” Drury, p. 68.
35 “to fill eighty books of five hundred pages.” Sagan, p. 227.
CHAPTER 20 SMALL WORLD
1 “Louis Pasteur, the great French chemist . . .” Biddle, p. 16.
2 “a herd of about one trillion bacteria . . .” Ashcroft, p. 248; and Sagan and Margulis, Garden of Microbial Delights, p. 4.
3 “Your digestive system alone . . .” Biddle, p. 57.
4 “no detectable function at all.” National Geographic, “Bacteria,” August 1993, p. 51.
5 “about 100 quadrillion bacterial cells.” Margulis and Sagan, p. 67.
6 “We couldn't survive a day without them.” New York Times, “From Birth, Our Body Houses a Microbe Zoo,” October 15, 1996, p. C3.
7 “Algae and other tiny organisms . . .” Sagan and Margulis, p. 11.
8 “Clostridium perfringens, the disagreeable little organism . . .” Outside, July 1999, p. 88.
9 “a single bacterium could theoretically produce more offspring . . .” Margulis and Sagan, p. 75.
10 “a single bacterial cell can generate . . .” De Duve, A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, vol. 2, p. 320.
11 “all bacteria swim in a single gene pool.” Margulis and Sagan, p. 16.
12 “microbes known as Thiobacillus concretivorans . . .” Davies, p. 145.
13 “Some bacteria break down chemical materials . . .” National Geographic, “Bacteria,” August 1993, p. 39.
14 “like the scuttling limbs of an undead creature . . .” Economist, “Human Genome Survey,” July 1, 2000, p. 9.
15 “Perhaps the most extraordinary survival . . .” Davies, p. 146.
16 “their tireless nibblings created the Earth's crust.” New York Times, “Bugs Shape Landscape, Make Gold,” October 15, 1996, p. C1.
17 “it would cover the planet . . .” Discover, “To Hell and Back,” July 1999, p. 82.
18 “The liveliest of them may divide . . .” Scientific American, “Microbes Deep Inside the Earth,” October 1996, p. 71.
19 “The key to long life . . .” Economist, “Earth's Hidden Life,” December 21, 1996, p. 112.
20 “Other microorganisms have leapt back to life . . .” Nature, “A Case of Bacterial Immortality?” October 19, 2000, p. 844.
21 “claimed to have revived bacteria frozen in Siberian permafrost . . .” Economist, “Earth's Hidden Life,” December 21, 1996, p. 111.
22 “But the record claim for durability . . .” New Scientist, “Sleeping Beauty,” October 21, 2000, p. 12.
23 “The more doubtful scientists suggested . . .” BBC News online, “Row over Ancient Bacteria,” June 7, 2001.
24 “Bacteria were usually lumped in with plants . . .” Sagan and Margulis, p. 22.
25 “In 1969, in an attempt to bring some order . . .” Sagan and Margulis, p. 23.
26 “By one calculation it contained . . .” Sagan and Margulis, p. 24.
27 “only about 500 species of bacteria were known . . .” New York Times, “Microbial Life's Steadfast Champion,” October 15, 1996, p.