Earth Science: Geology, the Environment, and the Universe

Chapter 22: The Precambrian Earth

Problem of the Week

Hydrothermal Vent Communities

In this exercise, the focus should be on comparing and contrasting:

1. Life in the photosynthetic zone that requires light to produce energy and the life in the aphotic/chemosynthetic zone of the deep-sea hydrothermal vent community.


2. Life as it might have developed in the early Earth environment, and life in the present-day, deep-sea hydrothermal vent environment.

Students should use the resource Web sites to explore the ideas presented about early life forms in Chapter 22, and the possibility that life may have had its beginnings in similar conditions. They should observe that life is tenacious and exists in conditions that were thought by scientists to be uninhabitable less than 30 years ago.