Dr. Steven Novella

So why were they hanging out down there?

And the thinking is... Is it because that's where stuff dies?

No, it's about the oxygen.

I mean, the fruit's everywhere, you know.

So there probably was relatively higher oxygen sort of clinging to the life at the bottom of the ocean.

And lives.

Yeah.

But then there's like very little oxygen in between.

And then at the surface, there's also a lot of oxygen because it's collecting the atmosphere.

And so the oxygen concentration is going to be very high at the surface.

Yeah, I don't think the ozone had fully formed at that point.

But they wanted to know, were they aerobic or anaerobic, right?

And where were they living?

That was kind of what they were studying.

And what they found was that they were benthic aerobes.

Benthic means living at the ocean floor.

Aerobes mean they were using oxygen.

But the reason why they were there for so long is probably because they couldn't get through the transition zone because there was too low oxygen.

They couldn't get to the surface.

Oh.