GEOBIOS, HYPERSEA AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HYPERMARINE UPWELLING FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPLEX LIFE

The geobios has been defined as "the area to which the terrestrial life of plants and animals is confined" (A. Schieferdecker, 1959, Geological Nomenclature). This definition distinguished the geobios from the hydrobios (the area occupied by forms living in water). Geobios is redefined here as the area of Earth’s surface that supports Hypersea (eukaryotic life on land; M. and D. McMenamin, 1994, Hypersea: Life on Land ). Geobios is characterized by a unique biogeochemical phenomenon, namely, the net upward biotic transport of mineral nutrients by fungi, vascular plants and associated organisms. This process, known as hypermarine upwelling, represents a wholesale seizure on a massive scale of the nutrient resources of the crust by the organisms of the land biota. As a result, Hypersea may be viewed as Vernadskian "pressure of life" that has escaped to fill an ecological void (A. L. Yanshina, ed., 2000, V. I. Vernadsky: Pro et Contra , Seriya Ruskii Put’, St. Petersburg). The unusual properties of geobios include the following: generation of a characteristic rock type (coal); generation of unexpectedly high levels of biodiversity in what might truly be said to constitute a symbiosphere, and; maintenance of a Hypersea that permits the establishment of levels of biotic complexity (rhizosphere and noösphere) that go beyond the products of exclusively hydrobiotic evolution.