An underwater revolution millions of years ago rewrote the ocean script

Look away in time and a pattern may appear. After examining thousands of ancient fossils, paleontologist Jack Sibkowski identified something like this in 1981: an epic sequence of life and death engraved on skeletons over the past 500 million years.

delay SibkovskyA professor at the University of Chicago discovered what became known as Three great animals of evolution From marine fauna – three successive explosions of ocean biodiversity over an orbit Eons of life.

This enormous abundance of marine life has been linked to disasters of varying degrees for the world: extinction-scale events that caused mass animal deaths – while paving the way for new creatures to emerge and thrive in the spaces they left behind.

But it doesn’t have to be this way New study She suggests. Forces of equal strength, capable of forming large evolutionary processes with planetary influences, do not always require massive asteroids or volcanoes.

Sometimes fire comes from within.

“The fossil record tells us that some of the most important changes in the history of life have been rapid changes caused by surprising external factors.” He clarifies Paleontologist Michelle Kowalski from the University of Florida.

“However, this study shows that some of these major transformations were more gradual and may have resulted from biological interactions between organisms.”

The condition at this point is what is known as Mesozoikum Maritime Revolution. About 150 to 200 million years ago, this shift represented all the major evolutionary changes that accompanied the increase in the number of marine predators such as bony fish, crustaceans, and predatory mollusks, forcing their invertebrate prey, such as mollusks, to adapt to defenses against attacks from dull and spongy grenades.

In the new study, which used models to demonstrate the network of relationships between vast prehistoric marine life groups, the team found that the Medieval Maritime Revolution represented an unrecognized fourth chapter of increasing biodiversity over the ages – three of which equate to the evolution of animals that Sibkowski was identified for decades.

“We merge the two hypotheses – the Maritime Revolution in the Mesozoic Era and three great evolutionary animals – into one story.” He clarifies First author and paleontologist Alexis Rojas of Umeå University in Sweden.

“Instead of three stages of life, the model shows four stages of life.”

Although the Mesozoic marine revolution was characterized by gradual environmental changes resulting from the interactions of marine life over millions of years, researchers ultimately led to a long-term biological transformation that can be compared to the size of The end of the Permian transition.

This event, often referred to as the “Great Death,” occurred about 250 million years ago and was the worst mass extinction on Earth. It wiped out nearly 80 percent of all marine species (and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrates).

In the period that followed, life revived with the third largest evolutionary animal known as the Modern Animal Period, according to Sibkovsky Framework.

However, according to Rogas, Kowalovsky and their team, the modern era intersected with the marine revolution in the Mesozoic Era and contributed to a remarkable change in the biodiversity of marine life on Earth during the mid-Cretaceous period about 129 million years ago.

“What we’ve actually built is an abstract fossil record that offers a unique perspective on how marine life is organized.” Rojas says.

“This map shows in its simplest the areas of the ocean in which certain animals live.” He adds. “The building blocks of our study are the individual animals themselves.”

The results are given in Communication Biology.