Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
Those aren't linear events though.
Mass extinctions play perhaps the largest role in shaping ecosystems and evolution.
Billions of years is lots of time for cataclysmic biological resets.
P.S. That is reasoning on my part, I am not a scientist.
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I agree. Thing is, though, if that's the case why did it evolve when it did? What happened to make that particular stretch of time work for the evolution of multicellular life, but none of the others? If mass extinctions punctuated life prior to multicellular life (and that raises other questions on how mass extinction events may have affected single cell life compared to multicellular life), why did we not see any proto-multicellular life in older rocks? Perhaps we will, perhaps we won't.
The Ediacran fauna in particular holds great fascination for me, in that it is possibly multicellular life predating the Precambrian, but doesn't appear to have any descendants.
It's all totally fascinating. I nearly followed this line of study, but opted for a job in my field instead.
Anyways, sorry for the rant. I know it's not news.