4 ms·
Some context: between 1.8 and 0.8 billion (milliard) years ago, the Earth went through a period colloquially called the "Boring Billion", when tectonically and
by gpvos 3y ago
Some context: between 1.8 and 0.8 billion (milliard) years ago, the Earth went through a period colloquially called the "Boring Billion", when tectonically and climatically almost nothing happened. Evolutionarily, however, this was the period when multicellularity and sexual reproduction developed. I guess that those developments were really complicated, so it took a lot of time before evolution chanced upon them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_Billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_Billion
https://youtu.be/0sbwUeTyDb0 https://youtu.be/0sbwUeTyDb0 (recommended video and series)
- borissk 3y agoI've read somewhere that we're the second wave of multi-cellular organisms that evolved on Earth - coming from worms, fish, tetrapods, etc. But there's evidence of an earlier evolution of multi-cellularity, those poor things dying out and leaving very few fossils.
- gpvos 3y agoMaybe you are referring to the Ediacaran period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota , which happened a bit later. Something like it can have happened before that as well, but that is more the subject of current research like in the featured article.