Billions of Years Before the Dinosaurs, Strange Creatures Inhabited In Earth

The evolutionary history of life on Planet Earth continues to be traced, how organisms live and their emergence. Earth formed about 4.5 Ga (billion years), it is estimated that there will be life on its surface within a billion years afterward. 

The existence of similarities with organisms living in the present era, indicates a common ancestor, which later evolved in length. More than 99% of all species, or more than five billion species, that have ever lived on earth are estimated to have become extinct. Current estimates of the number of Earth's species range from 10 – 14 million species, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and more than 86% have not been described. 

A discovery that is not good for the fate of mankind. In addition, this discovery also states that the search for inter-planetary life will be more complex than we imagined. The discovery itself was made by a group of academics from the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle led by Michael Kipp, as reported by the Itech Post. "The recognition of an interval in Earth's past, an era when Earth may have had different oxygen levels, and also very different living creatures, could mean that the detection of oxygen-rich distant planets is not necessarily a prerequisite for the existence of microorganisms and the biosphere. complex," said Michael Kipp in a statement on the UW website. 

Planet Earth began the process of becoming an oxygen-rich planet about 800 million years ago. So far, experts have concluded that biologically complex creatures, breathing oxygen, emerged as the planet became richer with oxygen. Thus, it was concluded that the life of ancient animals was possible because of the increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere. However, there was an era when oxygen levels were much higher. This happened in the era before the appearance of the first dinosaurs. 

The Lomagundi Incident: The “Oxygen Disaster” 

Earth suddenly became a planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere as a result of the so-called Lomagundi Event, also known as the “Oxygen Disaster” or the “Great Oxidation”. That is, when oxygen levels reached their highest point in the oceans between 2.3 billion and 2.1 billion years ago, before dropping again for less certain reasons. The Lomagundi incident could have provided an opportunity for 'strange' creatures to evolve over billions of years into the 'ancestor' of today's creatures. However, oxygen levels then drop again, and the various creatures are then also wiped out. This can illustrate that perhaps, the fate of mankind will experience the same thing.

To determine oxygen levels during the Lomagundi Event, Kipp and his team plan to analyze selenium in rocks that formed at the bottom of the ocean during the Lomagundi Event. Selenium is released when rocks in the soil are eroded in the presence of ox
ygen and metabolized by microbes in the ocean.

The large numbers in the Lomagundi rocks suggest that the amount of organic carbon buried in the deep sea suddenly spiked, as written in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

source : here