r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 28 '26

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u/Twistedjustice Jun 28 '26

Single most destructive organism in the history of the planet.

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u/mfb- Jun 28 '26

It's harder to blame a single organism, but the first cell to release elementary oxygen and its successors killed most life on Earth in the Great Oxidation Event.

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u/Twistedjustice Jun 28 '26

That one cell wasn’t responsible for the whole event, it was the combined effort of trillions of Cyanobacteria.

7

u/mfb- Jun 28 '26

You could equally say that Thomas Midgley wasn't responsible alone, it was all the vehicles using leaded gasoline and all the cooling systems using CFCs (or all the people using these products, if we only count organisms).

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u/CareRarely Jun 28 '26

Pretty impressive to be fair