A Journey Through Time Since the Precambrian

The Cambrian differed greatly from modern times, but it was also quite different from the preceding Proterozoic Eon (2.5 billion to 541 million years ago) in terms of climate, geography, and life. Average global temperatures during much of the Neoproterozoic Era (1 billion to 541 million years ago) were slightly cooler (at around 12 °C [54 °F]) than today’s average global temperature (around 14 °C [57 °F]) However, the global average temperature of Cambrian times were warmer, averaging 22 °C (72 °F).

Just prior to the beginning of the Neoproterozoic, Earth experienced a period of continental suturing that organized all of the major landmasses into the huge supercontinent of Rodinia. Rodinia was fully assembled by one billion years ago and rivaled Pangea (a supercontinent that formed later during the Permian Period) in size. Before the beginning of the Cambrian, Rodinia split in half, resulting in the creation of the Pacific Ocean west of what would become North America. By the middle and later parts of the Cambrian, rifting had sent the paleocontinents of Laurentia (made up of present-day North America and Greenland), Baltica (made up of present-day Western Europe and Scandinavia), and Siberia on their separate ways. In addition, a supercontinent called Gondwana formed, which was made up of what would become Australia, Antarctica, India, Africa, and South America.
Before the Cambrian began, sea levels rose and some continents flooded. This flooding, combined with the warm Cambrian temperatures and changes in Earth’s geography, led to increased rates of erosion that altered ocean chemistry. The most notable result was an increase in the oxygen content of seawater, which helped set the stage for the rise and later diversification of life—an event that has come to be known as the “Cambrian explosion,” in which early representatives of many of the major groups that make up modern animal life appeared.

By the Early Cambrian the bulk of the biosphere was confined to the margins of the world’s oceans; no life was found on land (except possibly cyanobacteria [formerly known as blue-green algae] in moist sediment), relatively few open sea species existed, and no organisms inhabited the ocean depths. Life in the shallow regions of the seafloor, however, was already well diversified, and this early aquatic ecosystem included the relatively large carnivore Anomalocaris, trilobites, mollusks, sponges, and scavenger arthropods.

The Ordovician Period was a time of significant changes in plate tectonics, climate, and in Earth’s ecosystems. Rapid seafloor spreading at oceanic ridges produced some of the highest global sea levels in the Phanerozoic Eon (which started at the beginning of the Cambrian). As a result, continents were flooded to an unprecedented level, with the continent that would become North America almost entirely underwater at times. These seas deposited widespread blankets of sediment that preserved treasure troves of fossil remains of marine animals. Scientists estimate that levels of carbon dioxide were several times higher than today, which would have created warm climates from the Equator to the poles; however, extensive glaciers appeared for a brief time over much of the Southern Hemisphere at the end of the period.

The Ordovician Period was also known for an intense diversification (an increase in the number of species) of marine animal life during an event which has been called the “Ordovician radiation.” This event resulted in the evolution of almost every modern phylum (group of organisms having the same body plan) of marine invertebrate by the end of the period, as well as the rise of fish. Ordovician seas were filled with a diverse group of invertebrates, which were dominated by brachiopods (lamp shells), bryozoans (moss animals), trilobites, mollusks, echinoderms (a group of spiny-skinned marine invertebrates), and graptolites (small, colonial, planktonic animals). On land the first plants appeared, as well as possibly the first invasion of terrestrial arthropods. The second largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history took place at the end of the period, claiming roughly 85 percent of all Ordovician species. Some scientists argue that an ice age, which occurred at the end of the period, contributed to the decimation of species.

During the Silurian, continental elevations were generally much lower than in the present day, and global sea level was much higher. Sea level rose dramatically as the extensive glaciers from the Late Ordovician ice age melted. This rising prompted changes in climatic conditions that allowed many faunal groups to recover from the extinctions of Late Ordovician times. Large expanses of several continents became flooded with shallow seas, and mound-type coral reefs were very common. Fishes were widespread. Vascular plants began to colonize coastal lowlands during the Silurian Period, whereas continental interiors remained essentially barren of life.

Reef mounds (bioherms) on the Silurian seafloor contained brachiopods, gastropods (class of mollusk containing present-day snails and slugs), crinoids (class of echinoderm containing present-day sea lilies and feather stars), and trilobites. A wide variety of agnatha (jawless) fishes appeared, as did fishes with a primitive jaws. Different endemic groups developed in Laurentia (known widely from sites in the Canadian Arctic, the Yukon, Pennsylvania, New York, and especially Scotland), Baltica (especially Norway and Estonia), and Siberia (including adjacent Mongolia).

The Devonian Period is sometimes called the “Age of Fishes” because of the diverse, abundant, and, in some cases, bizarre types of these creatures that swam Devonian seas. Forests and the coiled shell-bearing marine organisms known as ammonites first appeared early in the Devonian. Late in the period the first four-legged amphibians appeared, indicating the colonization of land by vertebrates.
During most of the Devonian Period, North America, Greenland, and Europe were united into a single Northern Hemisphere landmass, a minor supercontinent called Laurussia or Euramerica, but an ocean covered approximately 85 percent of the Devonian globe. There is limited evidence of ice caps, and the climate is thought to have been warm and equitable. The oceans experienced episodes of reduced dissolved oxygen levels, which likely caused the extinction of many species—some 70 to 80 percent of all animal species present—especially marine animals. These extinctions were followed by periods of species diversification, as the descendants of surviving organisms filled in abandoned habitats.

The Carboniferous Period is divided into two major subdivisions—the Mississippian (358.9 to 323.2 million years ago) and the Pennsylvanian (323.2 to 298.9 million years ago) subperiods. The Early Carboniferous (Mississippian) world is characterized by Laurussia—a series of small landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere was made up of present-day North America, western Europe through the Urals, and Balto-Scandinavia—and Gondwana—an enormous landmass made up of present-day South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent in the Southern Hemisphere. During this time, the Tethys Sea separated the southern margin of Larussia completely from Gondwana. By Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) times, however, most of Laurussia was fused to Gondwana and closed the Tethys.

The Carboniferous was a time of diverse marine invertebrates. Benthic, or sea-bottom, marine communities were dominated by the crinoids, a group of stalked echinoderms (invertebrates characterized by a hard, spiny covering or skin) that still lives today. The calcareous (containing calcium carbonate) remains of these organisms are significant rock-forming materials. A related, but extinct, group of stalked echinoderms, the blastoids, were also a big part of Carboniferous marine ecosystems.

Even though terrestrial insects had existed since the Devonian, they diversified during the Carboniferous Period. By the Pennsylvanian subperiod, dragonflies and mayflies had reached large sizes, with some of the earliest ancestors of modern dragonflies (Protodonata) having wingspans of approximately 70 cm (28 inches). Some scientists argued that higher oxygen concentrations present in the atmosphere during the Carboniferous Period (some 30 percent compared with just 21 percent during the early 21st century) may have played a role in enabling these insects to grow so large. In addition, fossils of more advanced insects capable of folding their wings, particularly cockroaches, are well represented in rocks of the Pennsylvanian subperiod. Other Pennsylvanian insects include the ancestral forms of grasshoppers and crickets and the first terrestrial scorpions.

Carboniferous terrestrial environments were dominated by vascular land plants ranging from small, shrubby growths to trees exceeding heights of 100 feet (30 meters). The Carboniferous Period was also the time of peak amphibian development and the emergence of the reptiles.

At the beginning of the Permian period glaciation was widespread, and latitudinal climatic belts were strongly developed. Climate warmed throughout the Permian times, and, by the end of the period, hot and dry conditions were so extensive that they caused a crisis in Permian marine and terrestrial life. This dramatic climatic shift may have been partially triggered by the assembly of smaller continents into the supercontinent of Pangea. Most of the Earth’s land area was incorporated into Pangea, which was surrounded by an immense world ocean called Panthalassa.
Terrestrial plants broadly diversified during the Permian Period, and insects evolved rapidly as they followed the plants into new habitats. In addition, several important reptile lineages first appeared during this period, including those that eventually gave rise to mammals in the Mesozoic Era. The largest mass extinction in Earth’s history occurred during the latter part of the Permian Period. This mass extinction was so severe that only 10 percent or less of the species present during the time of maximum biodiversity in the Permian survived to the end of the period.

The Triassic Period marked the beginning of major changes that were to take place throughout the Mesozoic Era, particularly in the distribution of continents, the evolution of life, and the geographic distribution of living things. At the beginning of the Triassic, virtually all the major landmasses of the world were collected into the supercontinent of Pangea. Terrestrial climates were predominately warm and dry (though seasonal monsoons occurred over large areas), and the Earth’s crust was relatively quiescent. At the end of the Triassic, however, plate tectonic activity picked up, and a period of continental rifting began. On the margins of the continents, shallow seas, which had dwindled in area at the end of the Permian, became more extensive; as sea levels gradually rose, the waters of continental shelves were colonized for the first time by large marine reptiles and reef-building corals of modern aspect.

The Triassic followed on the heels of the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth. During the recovery of life in the Triassic Period, the relative importance of land animals grew. Reptiles increased in diversity and number, and the first dinosaurs appeared, heralding the great radiation that would characterize this group during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Finally, the end of the Triassic saw the appearance of the first mammals—tiny, fur-bearing, shrewlike animals derived from reptiles.

Another episode of mass extinction occurred at the end of the Triassic. Though this event was less devastating than its counterpart at the end of the Permian, it did result in drastic reductions of some living populations—particularly of the ammonoids, primitive mollusks that have served as important index fossils for assigning relative ages to various strata in the Triassic System of rocks.

The Jurassic was a time of significant global change in continental configurations, oceanographic patterns, and biological systems. During this period the supercontinent Pangea split apart, allowing for the eventual development of what are now the central Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Heightened plate tectonic movement led to significant volcanic activity, mountain-building events, and attachment of islands onto continents. Shallow seaways covered many continents, and marine and marginal marine sediments were deposited, preserving a diverse set of fossils. Rock strata laid down during the Jurassic Period have yielded gold, coal, petroleum, and other natural resources.

During the Early Jurassic, animals and plants living both on land and in the seas recovered from one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth history. Many groups of vertebrate and invertebrate organisms important in the modern world made their first appearance during the Jurassic. Life was especially diverse in the oceans—thriving reef ecosystems, shallow-water invertebrate communities, and large swimming predators, including reptiles and squidlike animals. On land, dinosaurs and flying pterosaurs dominated the ecosystems, and birds made their first appearance. Early mammals also were present, though they were still fairly insignificant. Insect populations were diverse, and plants were dominated by the gymnosperms, or “naked-seed” plants.

The Cretaceous is the longest period of the Phanerozoic Eon. Spanning 79 million years, it represents more time than has elapsed since the extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred at the end of the period. The name Cretaceous is derived from creta, Latin for “chalk,” and was first proposed by J.B.J. Omalius d’Halloy in 1822. Chalk is a soft, fine-grained type of limestone composed predominantly of the armorlike plates of coccolithophores, tiny floating algae that flourished during the Late Cretaceous.

The Cretaceous Period began with Earth’s land assembled essentially into two continents, Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. These were almost completely separated by the equatorial Tethys seaway, and the various segments of Laurasia and Gondwana had already started to rift apart. North America had just begun pulling away from Eurasia during the Jurassic, and South America had started to split off from Africa, from which India, Australia, and Antarctica were also separating. When the Cretaceous Period ended, most of the present-day continents were separated from each other by expanses of water such as the North and South Atlantic Ocean. At the end of the period, India was adrift in the Indian Ocean, and Australia was still connected to Antarctica.

The climate was generally warmer and more humid than today, probably because of very active volcanism associated with unusually high rates of seafloor spreading. The polar regions were free of continental ice sheets, their land instead covered by forest. Dinosaurs roamed Antarctica, even with its long winter night.

Dinosaurs were the dominant group of land animals, especially “duck-billed” dinosaurs (hadrosaurs), such as Shantungosaurus, and horned forms, such as Triceratops. Giant marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and plesiosaurs were common in the seas, and flying reptiles (pterosaurs) dominated the sky. Flowering plants (angiosperms) arose close to the beginning of the Cretaceous and became more abundant as the period progressed. The Late Cretaceous was a time of great productivity in the world’s oceans, as borne out by the deposition of thick beds of chalk in Western Europe, eastern Russia, southern Scandinavia, the Gulf Coast of North America, and western Australia. The Cretaceous ended with one of the greatest mass extinctions in the history of Earth, exterminating the dinosaurs, marine and flying reptiles, and many marine invertebrates.

The Paleogene is the oldest of the three stratigraphic divisions of the Cenozoic Era. Paleogene is Greek meaning “ancient-born” and includes the Paleocene Epoch (66 million to 56 million years ago), the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago), and the Oligocene Epoch (33.9 million to 23 million years ago). The term Paleogene was devised in Europe to emphasize the similarity of marine fossils found in rocks of the first three Cenozoic epochs. In contrast, the Neogene Period encompasses the interval between 23 million and 2.6 million years ago and includes the Miocene (23 million to 5.3 million years ago) and the Pliocene (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago) epochs. The Neogene, which means “new born,” was designated as such to emphasize that the marine and terrestrial fossils found in the strata of this time were more closely related to each other than to those of the preceding period.

Until 2008, these two intervals were known as the Tertiary Period. Together, the Paleogene and Neogene Periods made up a time of enormous geologic, climatic, oceanographic, and biological change. They spanned the transition from a globally warm world containing relatively high sea levels and dominated by reptiles to a world of polar glaciation, sharply differentiated climate zones, and mammalian dominance. The Paleogene and Neogene were the stages of dramatic evolutionary expansion of not only mammals but also flowering plants, insects, birds, corals, deep-sea organisms, marine plankton, and mollusks (especially clams and snails), among many other groups. They saw huge alterations in Earth’s systems and the development of the ecological and climatic conditions that characterize the modern world. The end of the Neogene was a time in which glaciers grew in the Northern Hemisphere and primates emerged that later gave rise to modern humans (Homo sapiens), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and other living great apes.

The Quaternary has been characterized by several periods of glaciation (the “ice ages” of common lore), when ice sheets many kilometers thick have covered vast areas of the continents in temperate areas. During and between these glacial periods, rapid changes in climate and sea level have occurred, and environments worldwide have been altered. These variations in turn have driven rapid changes in life-forms, both flora and fauna. Beginning some 200,000 years ago, they were responsible for the rise of modern humans.