History Of The Earth
History Of The Earth
If you are the type of person who sometimes wakes up at 3:00 a.m. and lies in bed trying to wrap your tiny mind Around the achingly vast universe and where it's all headed well we have something for you ever since the Big Bang the universe has been drifting and expanding the birth and death of stars leave an aftermath of galaxies planets and even living organisms this includes the Sun planets and our solar system at the center the Sun swept in smaller elements like hydrogen and helium farther away heavier elements formed planets based on the core accretion model gravity was the driver khalessi Earth from a cloud of dust though earth was neatly orbiting the Sun as a rocky mass 4.5 billion years ago no organism could survive their radiation from the recent supernova kept the planet extremely hot its surface molten and oxygen was non-existent plus incredibly massive meteorites and asteroids frequently slammed onto the surface the earth got so hot it began melting heavier material sank to the Bottom lighter stuff rose to the top some elements evaporated this transformation created the Earth's layered core and mantle crust atmosphere and magnetic field without it earth would be blasted by harmful rays from The Sun.in the late Hadean Eon the earth was still in its late bombardment stage there is no life temperatures are extremely hot with frequent volcanic activity and hellish Environments the atmosphere is nebular possibly early
Oceans or bodies of liquid water the moon is formed around this time probably due to a proto planets collision into Earth in addition there's reason to believe that these collisions could have sparked the chemical building blocks for life DNA eventually the climate on earth became more stable instead of a molten State the earth started to cool down water vapor condensed to form oceans and the earth cooled down enough to create became Earth's first supercontinent photosynthetic organisms appeared Between 3.2 and 2.4 billion years ago and began enriching the atmosphere with oxygen single-celled organisms consumed the sun's energy as a waste product
These cyanobacteria
eventually filled the oceans and atmosphere with oxygen earth now had an
oxygenated atmosphere for new life to flourish but it wasn't cyanobacteria
oxygen was toxic for them much life on Earth probably died out as its levels
rose and what is known as the oxygen catastrophe imagine eight dominant species
polluting the planet until extinction resistant forms
survived and thrived and
some developed the ability to use oxygen to increase their metabolism and
obtain more energy from the same food at this time methane
was more abundant in the
atmosphere one thing that methane did very well was trap heat in the atmosphere
it's one of the most efficient greenhouse gases so when oxygen combined with
methane it produced carbon dioxide all of a sudden the greenhouse effect wasn't
as strong as a result the whole planet froze it was snowball earth for the next
300 million years as oxygen filled the
Atmosphere Earth's ozone
layer thickened before the presence of an ozone layer life was restricted to
shallow water because water shielded harmful radiation that's where life
existed eventually a thicker ozone layer enabled life to diversify on land 541
million years ago hard-shelled
Invertebrates originated
in the oceans and life got more diverse from there next came the age of fish
when thousands of fish species arose plants and fungi were the first to venture
out of the water requiring them to adapt to new conditions on dry terrain some
fish stayed in close proximity to land and gradually adapted to life there
Simultaneously
developing lungs amphibians were the first vertebrates to make the move tool
and the transition to
Life on land benefitted
these creatures because there was no predators to begin with and food was
plentiful that was the start of the Age of amphibians then 250 million years
ago was the Permian extinction which caused extinction of
95% of all living
species when Earth's climate became hotter and drier rainforests collapsed
triggering the age
Of reptiles unanimously
depicted by tyrannosaurus red locked in eternal conflict with mortal enemy
Triceratops
Because reptiles evolved
to dry land conditions they gained a unique ecological advantage also notable
is
that Pangaea existed as
one supercontinent in this area dinosaurs lived on one supercontinent plate tectonics
Worthy mechanism that eventually tore continents apart don't forget that dinosaurs
existed for 160 million years so continental drift gradually drifted dinosaurs
apart from between the feet of stomping dinosaurs ratty animals scurry about
cue an asteroid impact and the age of
mammals begins mammals
evolved from mammal-like reptiles called therapists about 200 million years ago
and birds from small tetrapod dinosaurs about 150 million years ago this
evolution of both mammals and birds accelerated after the extinction of the
dinosaurs 65 million
years ago when a
six-mile-wide asteroid struck earth just off the Yucatan Peninsula this ejected
vast quantities
Of particulate matter and vapor into the air that occluded sunlight inhibiting photosynthesis seventy-five percent of all life including the non-avian dinosaurs became extinct poor dinosaurs imagine that if the meteor never hit earth we would be intelligent dinosaurs the first true mammals evolved in the shadows of dinosaurs and other large arcos ores when dinosaurs roamed the earth mammals were very small and were probably nocturnal to escape predation and because dinosaurs went extinct mammals emerged as the largest land animals at the time creatures like ambulocetus took to the oceans to eventually evolve into whales whereas some creatures like primates took to the trees then just several million years ago we believe that human life began to evolve Apes remained in trees for their primary food source eventually grass began to spread in places like the African savanna and there were fewer trees this forced Apes to walk to new food sources with their heads above the grass to see predators apes evolved by walking on two legs it also helped to have their hands available when they were traveling brain size increased rapidly and by two million years ago the first animals classified in the genus Homo had appeared they were known for sharpening objects with silicon rocks they began to master the use of their hands and fingers in the Stone Age early humans had fire under control this enabled them to cook their food giving them more Calories modern humans Homo sapiens learned to make more complex sounds and share information in groups they are believed to have originated around 200,000 years ago or earlier in Africa the oldest fossils date back to around 160 thousand years ago and since then
Humans have struggled to
survive or maybe earth has 5 billion years to build the earth and only several
years to ruin it what do you think about Earth's story. I Hope you enjoy the
story Thank you
Comments
Post a Comment