Ah, that's a relief. It sounded incredibly scary if it was some new type of species just now. I would imagine that it would overwhelm our ecosystems wreaking havoc until a new balance is eventually found with new winners and new types of species dominating our environment.
Ah, thank you, I was suspicious thinking what are the chances they would just happen to be watching something microscopic when such a rare thing occurs...
So, since the article didn't mention it, presumably nothing interesting happened as a result? Yet?
The article specifically says it likely happened 100 million years ago and that the interesting thing is an organelle that fixes nitrogen. That is a big deal, on the order of photosynthesis. A lack of nitrogen-fixing organisms is an extremely common cause of desertification; e.g., it's why industrial farming requires fertilizer, and a major reason why once a forest is clear-cut you'll only get one more generation of trees.
Perhaps 100,000 years is a better analogy for a week in evolution. A lot can happen in 100 million years of evolution. The boreoeutherian ancestor, that is the ancestor of all humans, rodents, carnivores, cetaceans and more was alive roughly that many years ago.
Eh, it's not like it was an instantaneous event. If the symbiotic relationship first began developing a hundred million years ago, it may have taken the bacteria all this time to get to the point where they're now – organelles that are now fully dependent on the host algae cell.
