Finding a connection between the formation of the oldest known Himalaya-style mega-mountains and the appearance of Metazoan Animals.
[sciencythoughts.blogspot.com]
It was extremely fortunate for the stability of life that despite the planet active dynamics over geologic time, surface temperatures were always sufficiently moderate to maintain liquid water in the oceans and, therefore, sustain the continuous biological evolution since at least early Archean time. The first oceans were accumulated via mantle degassing and/or cometary bombardment much earlier, during the Hadean Eon. Within this realm, life appeared on Earth at least by about 3.8 billion yeats ago, the age of supracrustal rocks of southwest Greenland bearing biogenic carbon isotopes of graphite, or possibly as early as 4.1 billion years ago, the age of similar evidence more recently reported from a Western Australian zircon grain. For the following three billion years or so, microorganisms were the only life forms in the primitive oceans, and their fossil evidence attests to a very slow evolutionary rate of morphological change. The first organisms were Prokaryotes, such as Bacteria and Archaea, which continue microscopic and morphologically simple, yet ubiquitous and extremely important, even today. Later, during Proterozoic time, environmental pressures and opportunities led to evolutionary developments that eventually produced the Eukarya, initially and for a very long time solely microscopic, which have lived side-by side with Prokaryotes ever since.
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Posted by JoeBKite-like structures in the western Sahara Desert.
Posted by TriphidAn Aussie Indigenous Message Stick.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by JoeBDortoka vremiri: A new species of Dortokid Turtle from the Late Cretaceous of the Hațeg Basin, Romania.
Posted by JoeBThe Cabeço da Amoreira burial: An Early Modern Era West African buried in a Mesolithic shell midden in Portugal.
Posted by JoeBMusivavis amabilis: A new species of Enantiornithine Bird from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of northeastern China.
Posted by JoeBTorosaurus in Canada.
Posted by JoeBStone tools from the Borselan Rock Shelter, in the Binalud Mountains of northeastern Iran.
Posted by JoeBDating the Lantian Biota.
Posted by JoeBBashanosaurus primitivus: A new species of Stegosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Chongqing Municipality, China.
Posted by JoeBDetermining the time of year when the Chicxulub Impactor fell.
Posted by JoeBSão Tomé and Príncipe: Possibly the last country on Earth never to have been visited by a working archaeologist.
Posted by JoeBMambawakale ruhuhu: A new species of Pseudosuchian Archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of Tanzania.