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Are you thinking about the times when something like 90% of all species on the planet went extinct?
by irrational 3y ago
Are you thinking about the times when something like 90% of all species on the planet went extinct?
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoWas that the time algae took off, covered the oceans, and oxygenated the atmosphere? Which then allowed mammals and eventually humans, because then there was oxygen. The byproduct being a huge mass extinction of everything that could not survive in oxygen. I often think humans are like the algae, the human species is just naturally overtaking the planet and producing CO2 like the algae created oxygen. We're terraforming Earth for the next species that will evolve out of it when we are gone.
- kadoban 3y ago> Was that the time algae took off, covered the oceans, and oxygenated the atmosphere? Yep, the Oxygen Catastrophe, or I think it has several other names. It was so far back that we don't really have a great way to know what it killed off, but it almost had to be a lot. Oxygen is reactive as hell. > We're terraforming Earth for the next species that will evolve out of it when we are gone. Pretty much, though we may very well survive it ourselves. We already have a name for the extinction event we're causing, it's called the Holocene extinction, or the Anthropocene extinction depending on which you prefer.
- kleiba 3y agoYeah, exactly.
- KevinMS 3y agoYou don't need a global catastrophe for species extinctions. Millions of species have probably gone extinct just because they got out-competed by another species. If you believe in evolution you also have to believe in natural extinction, because species don't just adapt to be optimal, they adapt to survive, and that doesn't always work.