A new nail in the intelligent design's coffin!

A new paper published in Nature indicates that an increase in atmospheric oxygen levels might have "stimulated the evolution of macroscopic multicellular animals and the oxygenation of deep oceans".

This new oxygenation is considered as a very stressful event in our planet natural history because oxygen usage means free radicals production and protein (and DNA) damage. It would be very interesting to compare phylogenetic data from anti oxidant and DNA repair proteins. If this theory is right, we should be able to correlate atmospheric/ocean oxygen increase with cellular molecular protection.

Reference: Fike, D.A., et al. (2006) Oxidation of the Ediacaran Ocean. Nature, December 2006, p 744-747.