Comparison of Vascular and Non-Vacular Plants
The tabulate colonial corals are the first corals to appear in the fossil record (shown above is the Foerstiphyllum vacua)
Super-continent Rodinia
GEOLOGIC TIMELINE
Holocene (Today)
Industrial Revolution
Introduced concepts of factories, AI, machine learning, robotics, that could possibly reduce the need for much human labour in the near future
Led to a new age of innovation and technology
Global Warming
Predicted that 20% of all plant and animal species on Earth will be extinct in the next 25 years
Habitat destruction, pollution, etc. causing mass extinction of plant and animal species
Human activity influencing the surrounding environment
Human Civilization
The Holocene witnessed all of humanity’s recorded history
Pleistocene
Mass extinction of large mammals and many birds
Likely caused by the end of the last ice age
Evolution of Homo Sapiens
Little Ice Age
much of the world's temperate zones were alternately covered by glaciers during cool periods and uncovered during warmer interglacial periods
mountain glaciers formed on all continents
Pliocene
Drying of the Mediterranean Sea
remained plains and grasslands for the next several million years
Formation of the Himalayan Mountains
tectonic plates of India and Asia collided
Enormous spread of grasslands and savannas
change in vegetation led to the rise of grazers in these areas
longer legs allowed for them to walk long distances to new feeding grounds
grazers got larger and developed larger teeth suitable for a diet of grass
possibly caused by the cooling and drying of global environments
First hominids
Miocene
Rise of the Andes Mountains
This led to the formation of a rain shadow effect in the southeastern part of the continent
This event was caused by the movements in plate tectonics in the vicinity of South America
Appearance of More Mammals
i.e. Horses, dogs, bears
Formation of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain Ranges
Increase of droughts and decrease in rainfall promoted drier climates
Caused a non-seasonal and drier mid-continent climate
Two new major ecosystems
Grasslands
Led to open habitat herbivores and carnivores
The expansion of grasslands correlated to a drying of continental interiors as the global warming first warmed, then cooled
Kelp forests
Led to the appearance of sea otters and other critters unique to this environment
Oligocene
The Grand Coupure
The extinction of any Eocene genera and species
about 20 first appearances
around 17 generic extinctions
event involved the immigration from areas to the east of many taxa, artiodactyls, and perissodactyls
Appearance of many grasses
intimately linked to the expansion of grazing animals
Appearance of new mammals
i.e. pigs, deer, cats, rhinos, tapirs
Eocene
Primitive whales appear
The Circum-Antarctic Current
This changed oceanic circulation patterns and global heat transport, resulting in a global cooling event
Caused by the separation of Antartica and Australia creating a deep water passage between those two continents
Eohippus - First Known Horse
Paleocene
First primitive primates
First large mammals
Paleocene mammals show the beginning of specializations that characterize their later descendants
At the start of the Paleocene Epoch, the world was practically without larger terrestrial animals, however, by the end, they had occupied a large part of the vacant ecological niches.
Cenozoic Era (~65 MYA - Today)
Cretaceous
The Uplift of the Rocky Mountains
Streams eroded away at the sedimentary rock
Giant blocks of ancient crystalline rock, overlain by younger sedimentary broke and were thrust upward
Continents take on a Modern-Day Look
The K-T Extinction of Dinosaurs
Most likely caused by asteroid impact or volcanism
First Flowering Plants
Quickly dominated plant life on land and remain so today
i.e. Angiosperms (evolved from a specialized group of seed ferns)
Jurassic
Appearance of dinosaur-like birds
Pterosaurs were the largest vertebrates ever known to fly
Archaepteryx were the first, primitive, dinosaur-like birds
Minor mass extinction at the end of the early Jurassic period
Possibly triggered by the release of huge methane deposits from within the Earth
more than 80% of marine bivalve species (i.e. clams) and other shallow-water specieis died out
More dinosaur species appear
The Dipolodocus and Apatosaurus diversified
i.e. The giant Sauropod
Earthworms
Triassic
In the seas, icthyosaurs (marine reptiles) appeared
Minor extinction
It is not certain what caused this extinction, possibly global cooling or an asteroid impact
This allowed for dinosaurs to expand into many niches
35% of all animal families died out
First Mammals and Crocodyliformes
Some scientists believe that mammals evolved from a group of extinct mammal-like reptiles, Theriodontia
Start of the Age of Dinosaurs
After the largest extinction event in history (Permian Extinction), the survivors of that event spread and recolonized
Mesozoic Era (~248 - 65 MYA)
Permian
Pangea
Rest of the surface area of the Earth was occupied by a single ocean (Panthalassa) and a smaller sea known as Tethys
Motion of the Earth’s crustal plates fused much of the total land into Pangea
Largest mass extinction
Possibly caused by glaciation or volcanism
Extinction of:
Many trees
50% of all animal families
Trilobites
95% of all marine species
The Age of Amphibians
Amphibians and reptiles dominated
Carboniferous
Formation of the Ural
A collision of Siberia and eastern Europe
Formation of the Appalachian Mountain Belt
Collision of Laurrussia (present-day Europe and North America) into Godwanland (present-day Africa and South America)
Mild Temperatures
Increase in the number of tree ferns
Evidenced by the decrease in lycopods and large insects
Amniote Egg
This allowed the ancestors of birds, mammals, and reptiles to reproduce on land by preventing the dessication of the embryo inside
Winged Insects
i.e. appearance of mayflies and cockroaches
Devonian
Mass Extinction
Most likely due to glaciation or meteorite impact
Wiped out 30% of all animal families
First Insects
i.e. Springtails
First Shark, Bony Fish, and Ammonoids
First Amphibians
Ferns
Silurian
Stabilization of the Earth’s general climate
Contributed to a substantial rise in the levels of major seas
This ended the previous pattern of erratic climatic fluctuations
Led to the melting of large glacial formations
First Vascular Plants
These plants have water-conducting tissue compared with non-vascular plants
First Jawed Fish
Ordovician
Geographical Changes
North America under shallow seas
Global cooling, glaciation, and lots of volcanism
High sea levels at first
First Coral Reefs
First Land Plants
Gondwana
Most of the world’s land collected into this southern super-continent
The area north of the tropics almost entirely ocean
Cambrian
Extinction of trilobites nautiloids
Most likely due to glaciation
50% of all animal families went extinct
Rodinia
Position of the continents was very different from current day (e.g. Califronia on the equator or Venezuela near the South Pole)
Super-continent Rodinia begins to break into smaller continents (with no correspondence to modern-day land masses)
Rocks of Cambrian
Distributed in the Great Basin of the western U.S, parts of Wales, Scandinavia, and the Baltic region, Siberia and China, among other places
Cambrian Explosion
All existent phyla develop
When most of the major animal groups started to appear in the fossil record, a time of rapid expansion of diverse forms of life on Earth
Paleozoic Era (~540 - 330 MYA)
