Enabling Burrowing
Microbial mats formed a blanket, cutting off the underlying sediments from the ocean water above. This meant that the sediments were anoxic, and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) was abundant. The free exchange of the pore waters with oxygenated ocean water was essential to make the sediments inhabitable. This exchange was made possible by the action of minute animals: too small to produce burrows of their own, this meiofauna inhabited the spaces between sand grains in the microbial mats. Their bioturbation— movement that dislodged grains and disturbed the resistant biomats— broke them up, allowing water and chemicals to mix on both sides of the mat.
Read more about this topic: Cambrian Substrate Revolution
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“Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Labor was toil, distress, trouble, fatigue—an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)