Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Little is known about the paleogeography before the formation of Rodinia. Paleomagnetic and geologic data are only definite enough to form reconstructions from the breakup of Rodinia [17] onwards. Rodinia is considered to have formed between 1.3 and 1.23 Ga and broke up again before 750 Ma. [18] Rodinia was surrounded by the superocean Mirovia.
The earliest terrestrial fungus fossils, or at least fungus-like fossils, have been found in South China from around 635 million years ago. The researchers who reported on these fossils suggested that these fungus-like organisms may have played a role in oxygenating Earth's atmosphere in the aftermath of the Cryogenian glaciations. [3]
Rodinia formed after the breakup of the supercontinent Columbia and prior to the assemblage of the supercontinent Gondwana (~500 Ma). [19] The defining orogenic event associated with the formation of Gondwana was the collision of Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia forming the Pan-African orogeny .
Recognizable humans emerged at most 2 million years ago, a vanishingly small period on the geological scale. The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, [7] [8] [9] during the Eoarchean Era, after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean eon.
First tree sloths and hippopotami, diversification of grazing herbivores like zebras and elephants, large carnivorous mammals like lions and the genus Canis, burrowing rodents, kangaroos, birds, and small carnivores, vultures increase in size, decrease in the number of perissodactyl mammals. Extinction of nimravid carnivores.
The supercontinent, known as Rodinia, broke up around 750 Ma. A number of glacial periods have been identified going as far back as the Huronian epoch, roughly 2400–2100 Ma. One of the best studied is the Sturtian-Varangian glaciation, around 850–635 Ma, which may have brought glacial conditions all the way to the equator, resulting in a ...
The Boring Billion, otherwise known as the Mid Proterozoic and Earth's Middle Ages, is an informal geological time period between 1.8 and 0.8 billion years ago during the middle Proterozoic eon spanning from the Statherian to the Tonian periods, characterized by more or less tectonic stability, climatic stasis and slow biological evolution.
As creatures like Paramecium, Amoeba and Melanocyrillium appear, first animal-like cells become distinctive from plants – rise of herbivores in the food chain. Breakup of Rodinia , Sturtian glaciation begins, one of at least three episodes of Snowball Earth – great ice sheets cover most of planet stunting evolution of animal and plant life ...