Sacrificial Engineer Responsible For The Cambrian Explosion

OK, my bad. It was simple cellular life that began around the 3.8 billion year point with photosynthetic plant life beginning around 3.4 years ago, with our protective ozone layer forming between 580-540 million years ago. With the engineer breathing air similar to our requirements, this puts his (assumed first ) visit at around 542 millions years ago at the beginning of the Paleozoic Era (the Cambrian being the first period of that era). However, who's to say that the engineer did not have a lesser need for oxygen (or had some apparatus up his nostrils) and his visit could have been 700-600 millions years earlier when multi-cellular life was beginning to form. What we are shown at the end of the opening sequence is either cellular reproduction or the first actual multi-cellular organism catalysted by the engineer's broken down and re-incorporated DNA. I'm also inclined to believe that the this opening sequence requires a huge suspension of disbelief as there are a lot of contradictions. Let's not forget that it might not even be Earth making further dissection of this a moot discussion. What I'm saying is that there are some huge disconnects (what we see being created vs the atmosphere not yet quite right for breathing) that the writers try to fly over the head's of the masses hoping that those that have studied these things in academia won't notice and expose the "wizard behind the curtain". Either way, we have a humanoid being appearing way before primates and hominids began to actually appear around 4 million years ago. If, hypothetically speaking, something like these engineers are our "creators/gods" and their goal was to end up with the sentient life-form on this planet appearing to be cast in their image, then they would have had to make a lot of return visits to nudge the "clay" (us) into the mold.

I've always just called the black liquid the "primordial soup"

hmmm, no pony fights in here gang ok? LOL... Keep the peace! ;p

In the Cambrian Period there wouldn't be enough air to breathe for the engineer who doesn't wear a helmet. And the idea that the spreading of alien DNA on one spot in an ocean would massively change evolution on the whole planet and lead to almost similar creatures sometime in the future is ridiculous. This part of the film is worthless for a scientific discussion. The parasitic lifeforms are much more intersting.

The OP did not state and was not intended to invite a scientific argument. The OP was stating the nature of the black liquid, and citing the Cambrian explosion as a [b]POSSIBLE[/b] point of time in which the Sacrificial Engineer seeded Earth and accelerated the evolution of life on Earth. That is all. Rather than suggest another period of time in Earths history subsequent members argued that there was not enough oxygen for the Engineer to breathe during the Cambrian period (a slight conjecture considering he came here in A BIG UFO), and citing incorrectly Gondwana's break up as being before/during the Cambrian explosion. Both of which detract away from the core of the OP - the nature of the black liquid.

It's possible that the scene in question was a "re-seeding"? There were many mass extinctions throughout the history of life on Earth. It might not have been depicting pre-Cambrian Earth.

I think its definately Earth, but Im more interested in the Engineer itself. I think the Engineers once believed in a Supreme bieng "God" and in order to become one with thier god they researched into Bio-organics, eventually perfecting thier speices but the Engineers wanted more, they wanted to become Imortal, "Gods." This I think is that very black goo substance they created, but one Indiviual member of there race had different beliefs. I think the Sacrifial Engineer, believed God had created them and wanted the Engineers to in-turn create other life in the Universe, but these beliefs were too radical for the fellow Engineer race, so they cast out the Individual on Earth, where he did as he believed his gods wanted and drank the goo, sacrificing himself to seed Earth with life.

hmm, 530 million years ago? really? you reckon THAT's what the opening scene means? Wow.

The scene from the beginning pretty much has to be the seed of all life on Earth. The writers just overlooked the fact that Earth air at the time would not have been breathable. The other option, that engineer DNA was needed to create humans but not earlier life, and just happens to share 90% of its sequence with Earth bacteria that had already existed for 3 billion years prior but don't share any common ancestors, is far, far more ludicrous.

Hey dudes didn't read all of your pony battle (hehe jokin) here. Drakeequation, you gotta show some bona fide, I can tell you wikipedia is reliable on basic scientific knowledge like the break-up date of Gondwana. Am a paleontologist so maybe I can help and make some use for that phd here. The Cambrian explosion is a notable evolutionary event. However the more discoveries and facts pile up, the more we realise large parts of that diversity had already evolved before that. It appears the "explosive" factor is artefactually increased by the lack of good quality fossil record prior to it. All in all, yes major diversification event, though probably less "boom" than it looks like. However, I wonder why you guys (almost) always go for the most contorted solution. If it's not written on the screen "Earth- Cambrian" it seems a bit far fetched to assume the audience will get it. Plus cambrian organisms were not "simple unicellular organisms", there were pluricellular life forms with apex predators etc. including [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalocaris]Anomalocaris[/url] or, more related to us, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikaia]Pikaia[/url]. This means stuff as "complex" (not a good concept to look at evolution!) as for respectively arthropods (insects, spiders, crustaceans) and cephalochordates ("protovertebrates" with ~similar muscles, digestive track, proto-spine and 'head') had already evolved. And water was already swarming with all kinds of vegetal and animal life. Watching the intro, I considered this to be early post-formation Earth and the seeding of all known life. Must admit I thought I could see some grass too, but having seen the movie 3 times I am still unsure as it could be some weird grazing light on thin volcanic gravel or smth like it. Weird shade of greenish-brownish indeed, but could also be part of "suspension of disbelief" as they could assume people would see life more as "animal" (yes I assure you, they could assume that... *sigh*). Moreover, I think the massive amounts of water and running water were meant to hint at something. I think what they intend to show is sometime around the end of Hadeen around 4Gy ago. After the accretion and formation of Earth, the whole thing is pretty much in fusion and slowly cools down, emitting gases etc. A bit before 4Gy, as the temperature cools, water condensates in the primordial atmosphere and you had torrential rains, a downpour most similar to the biblical flood, washing all lands and forming the oceans. We found the earlier traces of life to be little more recent than that, ~3.8Gy. I think the (almost? erm...) naked earth we see and massive amounts of running water and waterfalls point at that. It is new-born earth and they seed life. Another argument in favor of that IMO are statements by the film's crew members in interviews. They said the engineers seeded humanoid life forms on planets all over the galaxy. Would be pretty hard to believe they took the chance and discovered several DNA-based proto-lifes on each planet then disrupted their course to have humanoids evolve at some point. Much simpler to assume they seeded it all themselves, justifying these all share a similar DNA-based life, among which humanoids resembling their creators were programmed to appear. Sorry I use so many words! hehe Cheers!

The Cambrian Explosion was used as a [b]possible[/b] point in time, not a definitive. Regardless, because of the nature of the "Seed" shown later on in Prometheus, I doubt this substance was used to create life, but rather to exponentially evolve pre-existing life by adding the genes of the Engineer to that of ancient Earth, leading to an abundance of four-limbed, two eyed, two eared, one nosed (with two nostrils) lifeforms that progressively lead to the evolution of the human race, aka Engineer clones, by the Engineers genes becoming more dominant than those found on indigenous Earth life forms.

Ermm must say I doubt that, Read my last part. Very hard to assume they would find several planets with similar DNA and carbon-based life that could be affected by the same black-goo. I think it makes more and a simpler sense to assume they seed the basic blocks of life that will allow life to form, and justify why it is all similar-one-common-ancester life-forms. Also, it is a simple shortcut from science, as the early steps of how those bricks formed and assembled are what still stirrs a lot of debate. So it's just easier to assume the basic blocks were seeded and the rest went on as we know it, then you just have to explain how they can control that a humanoid shape will evolve (and similar nostrils and all is far less trivial than what you seem to assume hehe, mostly on plenty different planets). Otherwise you have to make an already pretty bold statement that life evolved several times in our galaxy alone, then another major statement that all these unrelated "lifes" were DNA and carbon-based out of random, which allowed their black-goo magic to work spotless on each of these.

I'm working purely off what we see in the film, and what we see is this substance evolving existing lifeforms and affecting others - we do not see it creating life, just affecting it. And whose to say that there isn't plenty of life in the universe, and whose to say that the majority of said life isn't carbon based. Until we venture among the stars and visit other worlds we won't know all we can do while sitting on this small rock is assume and presume, beyond that we are all just hairless apes, a few of which think they have the answers to the entire universe when not a single one of us have even set foot on another world. What I'm saying is, is that we are a primitive race with delusions of grandeur, those that state they KNOW the facts know little if anything, theories are constantly being succeeded by newer theories, new discovers constantly put old established facts and assumptions into question. Rather than presume and assume we should observe and learn.

seriously, am not attcking you, only a debate of ideas here. Plus you should realize that my statements regarding life in the universe are actually much more conservative than yours, here. I am not saying there is no chance that there is plenty of life in the universe. Only there are necessarily less chances in only just our galaxy, even though I'm convinced there are still plenty of chances there. But what are the odds that such life originated like ours and used the exact same basic elements to build the exact same basic structure on which to store information? I precisely imply that it is pointless to look for life *only* in the way we know of it, looking for water on similar sized planets etc etc. Odds are much greater to find plenty of different kinds of life-forms which are based on other elements more frequently found on other planets, like methane atmospheres or ammonia lakes etc. The thing is, it's not even sure we'd see it, was it even right in front of a drone's probe, because that's not what current missions are looking for (still not saying there's life where we explored up to now though, just an example). To get back to the point. In the film, it seems different effects occur depending on whether you ingest or get in contact with the black goo. Then again, different effects seem to occur depending on the *kind* of black goo. I'm convinced they are about the same stuff, but I still have to make up my mind whether what the worms & Fifield are in contact with (mutanogenic black goo) is the exact same thing that what Holloway ingested (more liquid, in a vial) and what the Sacrificial Engineer ingested (more like the worm/Fifield black-goo but "active/in fusion") I have my theory about those different mixes of goo and different effects depending on how you get in touch with it. I will post it soon in a larger thread + a part here, but have to give it a bit more thoughts for now.

The stuff in the vials is the "Seed", a mutagen that causes the stated in the OP, the black goo in the urns is a catalyst that combines with and spreads the seed and acts as the "Seed" would have after being ingested (the broken up remnants of the engineer that seeded life).

eeeh nah, not for me, I don't see it that way. Not that far, similar kind of thinking, but not that way. And I think there's stuff your version doesn't explain quite well that mine does. Will post it here when I have put down a more synthetic version of my take on the broader scheme in a thread. (wow, that must be one of the shortest post I ever wrote since I first logged here. Am getting better! *pats his own shoulder*)

My uneducated try The first scene is Eden. They make Adam and Eve, and then transport them to earth.

Sounds legit LOL. But seriously, don't really fight about history on this movie. Was there really hieroglyphics showing Z2R? No. So, throw all history OUT THE FRICKIN WINDOW.

I could not really discern from the the movie the period whether it was 2.5M or 3.5M or more or less years ago. I assumed it was earth for the theme of the movie. I also assumed it was earth because the Engineers had earth clearly in their holographic star system map that was projected. I agree the black liquid is some sort of mutagenic accelerator. It appeared to me that Engineers have the manifest scientific knowledge to manipulate DNA. From the movie mapping Engineer DNA to Human DNA and finding a match. I can only assume the SJ (sacrificial Engineer) gave his life to offer life by consuming the mutagenic liquid. That then got washed over planet earth by pouring into the waterfall and assuming the river runs to the oceans etc. Affecting either existing or new species of organisms whether they are plant? or mammals? After that I guess it does not matter , the DNA that was engineered but the Engineers is on the planet and "active" in systemic recombination.

@ iapetus - be sure to PM the link to that thread, as I myself am almost there decoding the nature of the "Black Goo" and how it ties the Engineers, the Xenomorph and us together.