道在屎溺!糞堆炸出璀璨的生命進化之路!
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1.媒體來源:
外媒 ScienceAlert
2.記者署名:
Michael Irving
3.完整新聞標題:
An Ancient Poop Explosion Could Have Helped Complex Life Evolve
道在屎溺!糞堆炸出璀璨的生命進化之路!
4.完整新聞內文:
An Ancient Poop Explosion Could Have Helped Complex Life Evolve
道在屎溺!糞堆炸出璀璨的生命進化之路!
An Ancient Poop Explosion Could Have Helped Complex Life Evolve
Nature
05 August 2026
By Michael Irving
We may owe our very existence to an ancient poop explosion.
If the earliest animals hadn't been such prolific poopers, life might not have diversified into all the weird and wonderful forms we see today.
遠古時期的糞便爆炸可能幫助了複雜生命的演化
2026年8月5日
麥可歐文
我們或許要感謝遠古時期的糞便爆炸才有了今天的存在。
如果最早的動物沒有如此頻繁地排便，生命可能就不會多樣化成我們今天看到的各種奇特而美妙的形式。
That's the conclusion reached by a new review study published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
The team of scientists in Australia and Germany found that the Cambrian
explosion – a period around 540 million years ago when the ancestors of most animal groups arose – could have been partly set in motion by an explosion of feces, left by those that came before.
"Next to rising oxygen levels and other contributing factors, the importance of feces in ancient ecosystems is often overlooked," says Russell Bicknell, an evolutionary biologist at Flinders University in Australia.
"We have considered these ancient diets, increasingly sophisticated digestive systems and trophic interactions as part of a much bigger picture to help explain how more organic matter and nutrients poured into the ancient oceans to accelerate ecosystem development at the end of the Ediacaran and early Cambrian periods."
這是發表在《生態學與演化趨勢》雜誌上的一項最新綜述研究得出的結論。
澳洲和德國的科學家團隊發現，寒武紀生命大爆發（大約 5.4 億年前，大多數動物群體的祖先出現）可能部分是由先前人類留下的糞便大量堆積造成的。
「除了氧氣含量上升和其他因素外，糞便在古代生態系統中的重要性常常被忽視，」澳洲弗林德斯大學的進化生物學家羅素·比克內爾說。
「我們已將這些古代飲食、日益複雜的消化系統和營養相互作用視為一個更大圖景的一部分，以幫助解釋為什麼在埃迪卡拉紀末期和寒武紀早期，更多的有機物和營養物質湧入古代海洋，從而加速了生態系統的發展。”
A diagram illustrating how fecal matter filters down from water near the surface to deeper waters, cycling nutrients and fueling the evolution of new species. (Kimmig & Bicknell, Trends Ecol. Evol., 2026)
Life first appeared on Earth surprisingly soon after the planet itself was born, around 4.5 billion years ago.
But after that initial spike of inspiration, evolution seems to have rested on its laurels for a few billion years, and there wasn't really anything bigger than a few cells.
When evolution did finally dabble in more complex life, it apparently sparked a renewed wave of creative inspiration, and quickly branched out into all kinds of wacky creatures the likes of which Earth had never seen before.
圖示說明了糞便物質如何從近地表水層向下滲透到更深的水域，循環營養物質並促進新物種的演化。 (Kimmig & Bicknell, Trends Ecol. Evol ., 2026)
令人驚訝的是，地球上的生命出現的時間比地球本身誕生的時間還要短，大約在45億年前。
但在那最初的靈感迸發之後，進化似乎在數十億年的時間裡停滯不前，真正出現過的生物體也只有幾個細胞。
當進化最終涉足更複雜的生命時，它顯然激發了一波新的創造力，並迅速發展出各種地球上從未見過的古怪生物。
Illustration representing marine ecosystems before and after the Cambrian explosion. (Flinders University)
This spike in diversity occurred over a period of about 25 million years. That sounds like a long time, but it's just one frenzied afternoon in the studio relative to the almost 4 billion years it took for complex life to appear in the first place.
But why did the tree of life explode like this?
It's generally thought that the Cambrian explosion was fueled by an increase in oxygen in the atmosphere and water, a new protective layer of ozone, or an influx of nutrients washed into the oceans from erosion as the Snowball Earth melted.
The new study suggests an overlooked factor: A fecal revolution.
圖示寒武紀生命大爆發前後海洋生態系的變化。 （弗林德斯大學）
這種多樣性的激增發生在約2500萬年的時間裡。這聽起來很長，但與複雜生命最初出現所使用的近40億年相比，這只不過是錄音室裡一個忙碌的下午而已。
但生命之樹為何會這樣爆炸呢？
一般認為，寒武紀生命大爆發是由大氣和水中 氧氣的增加、新的臭氧保護層的形成，或雪球地球融化時侵蝕作用帶來的大量營養物質流入海洋所引發的。
這項新研究揭示了一個被忽視的因素：一場糞便革命。
As you might remember from kindergarten, everybody poops – from microscopic zooplankton to blue whales, the largest animals on the planet.
In today's ocean, that floating feces plays a key role in cycling nutrients like carbon, iron, nitrogen, and phosphorus from waters near the surface down to the deepest depths. It also makes these nutrients more accessible for other organisms.
This kind of cycle, the team suggests, was also playing out during the
Cambrian. As evolution was experimenting with a range of new forms of life, so too did those creatures experiment with new ways to offload their waste.
"During the Cambrian, the amount of particulate organic matter reaching
deeper water must have constantly increased as biomass grew significantly and more animals with guts arose," the researchers write.
To investigate whether the hypothesis was just a load of crap, the
researchers examined these ancient excretions, known as coprolites, from across the Cambrian.
你可能還記得幼兒園學過，所有生物都會排便—從微小的浮游動物到地球上最大的動物—藍鯨。
在當今海洋中，漂浮的糞便在營養物質（如碳、鐵、氮和磷）的循環中發揮關鍵作用，這些營養物質從近海面被輸送到最深的海底。它也使其他生物更容易吸收這些營養物質。
研究團隊認為，這種循環在寒武紀也同樣存在。隨著演化嘗試各種新的生命形式，這些生物也嘗試新的方式來排出廢物。
研究人員寫道： “在寒武紀時期，隨著生物量的顯著增長和更多具有內臟的動物的出現，到達更深水域的顆粒有機物的數量必然不斷增加。 ”
為了調查這個假設是否純屬胡說八道，研究人員檢查了這些來自寒武紀各地的 古代排泄物，即糞化石。
Examples of fossilized feces. (Kimmig & Bicknell, Trends Ecol. Evol., 2026)
The oldest fossilized feces dates back to the early Cambrian, around 540 million years ago. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, as the fossil record becomes more diverse and crowded, so too does the preserved poop.
The earliest examples tend to be tiny pellets, either loose or smooshed
together before being fossilized. Some of it is long and stringy, like you'd see trailing behind a goldfish, while others form films on long-abandoned burrows.
But as the lifeforms get bigger, so too does their poop. Later leavings look like logs, a few millimeters long, with crushed shells or fragments of other animals inside.
化石糞便的範例。 （Kimmig & Bicknell，《生態學與演化趨勢》，2026 年）
已知最古老的糞便化石可以追溯到寒武紀早期，大約5.4億年前。而且，或許並不令人意外的是，隨著化石記錄變得越來越多樣化和豐富，保存下來的糞便化石也越來越多。
最早的化石往往是細小的顆粒，在化石化之前要不是鬆散的，就是擠壓在一起的。有些化石呈現長條狀，就像金魚身後拖著的那種，而有些則在廢棄已久的洞穴中形成薄膜。
但隨著這些生物體型增大，它們的糞便也隨之增大。後期的糞便看起來像幾毫米長的木段，裡面含有碎貝殼或其他動物的碎片。
"With this shift, we see increasingly complex digestive systems, particularly in early arthropods which evolve specialized foreguts and digestive glands capable of processing a wider variety of food," says Bicknell.
"It becomes clear in the fossil record that the evolution of feeding
strategies aligns with the production and distribution of organic carbon and nutrients to start creating conditions we see in modern oceans and later on land, where fertilizer today is used to produce our food."
As more varied butts appeared and did their thing, they unknowingly helped pave the way for future lifeforms.
「隨著這種轉變，我們看到消化系統變得越來越複雜，尤其是在早期節肢動物中，它們進化出了專門的前腸和消化腺，能夠處理更多種類的食物，」比克內爾說。
「化石記錄清楚地表明，攝食策略的演變與有機碳和營養物質的生產和分配相一致，從而開始形成我們在現代海洋中看到的條件，後來又在陸地上形成條件，而如今我們在陸地上使用化肥來生產食物。”
隨著更多不同種類的屁股出現並發揮作用，它們在不知不覺中為未來的生命形式鋪平了道路。
"Complex marine systems can only develop when a combination of temperature, nutrition, and biological drivers are present," the researchers conclude.
"The rapid acceleration of organism size during the Cambrian Radiation
increased coprolite size, which yielded a positive feedback loop, further accelerating the establishment of these ecosystems."
The researchers say this kind of work gives us a new framework to examine evolution, one which scientists tend to turn their noses up at.
The review was published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
研究人員總結道：“只有當溫度、營養和生物驅動因素同時存在時，複雜的海洋系統才能發展。 ”
「寒武紀生命大爆發期間生物體大小的快速增長，導致糞化石尺寸增大，從而產生了正反饋循環，進一步加速了這些生態系統的建立。”
研究人員表示，這類研究為我們提供了一個審視演化論的新框架，而科學家往往對這種框架不屑一顧。
這篇綜述發表在《生態學與演化趨勢》期刊。
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