What was 600 million years ago. The Earth once looked like an alien place! Stone plate from Nepal

Late Proterozoic 650 million years ago.

The map depicts the collapse of the supercontinent Rodinia, which took place 1,100 million years ago.

Cambrian:
The Cambrian period began about 570 million years ago, possibly somewhat earlier, and lasted 70 million years. The beginning of this period was laid by an amazingly powerful evolutionary explosion, during which representatives of most of the main groups of animals known for the first time appeared on Earth. modern science... Across the equator stretches the vast continent of Gondwana, which includes parts of modern Africa, South America, Southern Europe, the Middle East, India, Australia and Antarctica. In addition to Gondwana, there were four smaller continents on the globe, located on the site of what is now Europe, Siberia, China and North America (but in conjunction with northwestern Britain, western Norway and parts of Siberia). The North American continent of that time was known as Lawrence.
In that era, the climate on Earth was warmer than today. The tropical coasts of the continents were bordered by giant stromatolite reefs, much like the coral reefs of modern tropical waters.

Ordovician. from 500 to 438 million years ago.

At the beginning of the Ordovician period, most of the southern hemisphere was still occupied by the great mainland of Gondwana, while other large land masses were concentrated closer to the equator. Europe and North America (Lawrence) gradually moved away from each other, and the Iapetus ocean expanded. At first, this ocean reached a width of about 2000 km, then began to narrow again as the land masses that form Europe, North America and Greenland gradually began to converge, until they finally merged into a single whole. Throughout the period, land masses shifted farther and farther south. The old Cambrian ice sheets have melted and sea levels have risen. Most of the land was concentrated in warm latitudes. At the end of the period, a new glaciation began. The end of the Ordovician was one of the coldest periods in the history of the earth. Ice covered most of the southern region of Gondwana.

Silurian from 438 to 408 million years ago.

Gondwana has moved towards the South Pole. The Iapetus Ocean shrank in size, and the land masses that form North America and Greenland drew closer together. They eventually collided to form the giant supercontinent Laurasia. It was a period of intense volcanic activity and intense mountain building. It began with the era of glaciation. As the ice melted, the sea level rose and the climate became milder.

Devonian. 408 to 360 million years ago.

The Devonian period was the time of the greatest cataclysms on our planet. Europe, North America and Greenland collided with each other, forming the huge northern supercontinent Laurasia. At the same time, huge masses of sedimentary rocks were pushed up from the ocean floor, forming huge mountain systems in the east of North America and in the west of Europe. Erosion of rising mountain ranges has resulted in the formation of a large number pebbles and sand. They formed extensive deposits of red sandstone. The rivers carried mountains of precipitation into the seas. Vast swampy deltas were formed, which created ideal conditions for animals that dared to take the first, such important steps from water to land. By the end of the period, the sea level dropped. The climate has warmed over time and became harsher, with alternating periods of heavy rains and severe droughts. Large areas of the continents have become waterless.

Carbon. 360 to 286 million years ago.
At the beginning of the Carboniferous period (Carboniferous), most of the earth's land was collected in two huge super-continents: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. Throughout the Late Carboniferous, both supercontinent steadily approached each other. This movement pushed up new mountain ranges that formed along the edges of the plates of the earth's crust, and the edges of the continents were literally flooded with streams of lava erupting from the bowels of the Earth. In the early Carboniferous, shallow coastal seas and marshes were spread over vast areas, and an almost tropical climate was established on most of the land. Enormous forests with lush vegetation have significantly increased the oxygen content of the atmosphere. Later it got colder, and at least two large glaciations occurred on Earth.

Early Carboniferous.

Late Carboniferous

Permian. from 286 to 248 million years ago.

Throughout the Permian period, the supercontinent Gondwana and Laurasia gradually approached each other. Asia collided with Europe, throwing up the Ural mountain range. India "ran over" to Asia - and the Himalayas arose. And the Appalachians grew up in North America. By the end of the Permian period, the formation of the giant supercontinent Pangea was completely completed. The Permian period began with glaciation, which caused a decrease in sea level. As Gondwana moved northward, the land warmed up and the ice gradually melted. It became very hot and dry in Laurasia, and vast deserts spread across it.

Triassic
from 248 to 213 million years ago.

The Triassic period in the history of the Earth marked the beginning of the Mesozoic era, or the era of "middle life". Before him, all the continents were merged into a single giant supercontinent Panagea. With the onset of the Triassic, Pangea again began to split into Gondwana and Laurasia, and the Atlantic Ocean began to form. Sea levels all over the world were very low. The climate, almost everywhere warm, gradually became drier, and vast deserts formed in the inland regions. Shallow seas and lakes evaporated intensively, which is why the water in them became very salty.

Jurassic period
from 213 to 144 million years ago.

By the beginning of the Jurassic period, the giant supercontinent Pangea was in the process of active decay. South of the equator, there was still a single vast continent, which was again called Gondwana. Later, it also split into parts that formed today's Australia, India, Africa and South America. The sea flooded a significant part of the land. Intense mountain building took place. At the beginning of the period, the climate was generally warm and dry, then became more humid.

Early Jurassic

Late Jurassic

Cretaceous period
from 144 to 65 million years ago

During the Cretaceous period, the "great split" of the continents continued on our planet. The huge land masses that formed Laurasia and Gondwana were gradually falling apart. South America and Africa were moving away from each other, and the Atlantic Ocean became wider and wider. Africa, India and Australia also began to diverge in different directions, and as a result, giant islands were formed south of the equator. Most of the territory of modern Europe was then under water.
The sea flooded vast tracts of land. The remains of hard-cover planktonic organisms formed huge strata of chalk deposits on the ocean floor. At first, the climate was warm and humid, but then it became noticeably colder.

The boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic is 66 million years ago.

Eocene 55 to 38 million years ago.
In the Eocene, the main land masses began to gradually assume a position close to that which they occupy today. Much of the land was still divided into some kind of giant islands, as the huge continents continued to move away from each other. South America lost contact with Antarctica, and India moved closer to Asia. North America and Europe also split, with new mountain ranges emerging. The sea flooded part of the land. The climate was generally warm or temperate. Much of it was covered with lush tropical vegetation, and vast areas were overgrown with dense swampy forests.

Miocene. 25 to 5 million years ago.

Throughout the Miocene, the continents were still "on the march", and during their collisions a number of grand cataclysms occurred. Africa crashed into Europe and Asia, resulting in the creation of the Alps. With the collision of India and Asia, the Himalayan mountains shot up. At the same time, the Rocky Mountains and Andes formed, as other giant plates continued to shift and creep on top of each other.
However, Austria and South America remained isolated from the rest of the world, and each of these continents continued to develop its own unique fauna and flora. The ice sheet in the southern hemisphere has spread throughout Antarctica, which has led to further cooling of the climate.

Pleistocene. 2 to 0.01 million years ago

At the beginning of the Pleistocene, most of the continents occupied the same position as they do today, and some of them required to cross half the globe to do this. A narrow land "bridge" connected North and South America. Australia was located on the opposite side of the Earth from Britain.
Giant ice sheets crawled over the northern hemisphere. This was the era of the great glaciation with alternating periods of cooling and warming and fluctuations in sea level. This ice age continues to this day.

The last ice age.

The world in 50 million years

The world in 150 million years

The world in 250 million years

This is how the ancient continent Aldred looked hundreds of millions of years ago. 570-500 million years ago, the distribution of land over the Earth's surface was different than at present. The continent of Laurentia existed in the place of North America and Greenland. South of Laurentia, the Brazilian mainland stretched.

The African mainland included Africa, Madagascar, and Arabia. To the north of it, the Russian continent was located, corresponding to the Russian platform within the boundaries of the Danube delta, Dniester, Vistula, the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea, the Pechora, Ufa, Belaya rivers, the north of the Caspian Sea, the Volga delta, and the north of the Black Sea. The center of the platform is the city of Vladimir between the Oka and Volga rivers.

On the Russian platform, Cambrian deposits are distributed almost everywhere in its northern part, and are also known in the western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. To the east of the Russian continent was the Siberian continent - Angarida, which included the Siberian platform and adjacent mountain structures. In the place of modern China there was the Chinese mainland, to the south of it - the Australian mainland, covering the territory of modern India and Western Australia.

Ordovician period

At the beginning of the Paleozoic (500-440 million years ago) in the Northern Hemisphere from the ancient platforms - Russian, Siberian, Chinese and North American - a single continent of Laurasia was formed.

Hindustan (Madagascar island, Hindustan peninsula, south of the Himalayas), African (without the Atlas Mountains), South American (east of the Andes), Antarctic platforms, as well as Arabia and Australia (west of the mountain ranges of its eastern part) entered the southern mainland - Gondwana.

Laurasia was separated from Gondwana by the sea (geosyncline) Tethys (Central Mediterranean, Mesogeia), which took place in Mesozoic era along the Alpine folding zone: in Europe - the Alps, Pyrenees, Andalusian mountains, Apennines, Carpathians, Dinaric mountains, Stara Planina, Crimean mountains, Caucasus mountains; in North Africa - Northern part Atlas Mountains; in Asia - the Pontic Mountains and Taurus, the Turkmen-Khorasan Mountains, Elbrus and Zagros, the Suleiman Mountains, the Himalayas, the fold chains of Burma, Indonesia, Kamchatka, the Japanese and Philippine Islands; in North America - fold ridges of the Pacific coast of Alaska and California; in South America - the Andes; archipelagos flanking Australia to the east, including the islands of New Guinea and New Zealand. The territory covered by alpine folding retains high tectonic activity and in modern era, which is expressed in the intensely dissected relief, high seismicity and continuing volcanic activity in many places. The relics of Pratetis are the modern Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas.

Laurasia existed until the middle of the Mesozoic, and its changes consisted in the loss of the territories of North America and the subsequent reformation of Laurasia into Eurasia.

The skeleton of modern Eurasia is spliced ​​from fragments of several ancient continents. In the center is the Russian continent. In the north-west it is adjoined by Eastern the former Laurentia, which separated from North America after the Cenozoic subsidence in the Atlantic Ocean and formed the European bulge of Eurasia, are located west of the Russian platform. In the northeast - Angarida, which in the Late Paleozoic was articulated with the Russian continent by the folded structure of the Urals. In the south, the northeastern parts of the disintegrated Gondwana (Arabian and Indian platforms) joined Eurasia.

The collapse of Gondwana began in the Mesozoic, Gondwana was literally pulled apart piece by piece. By the end of the Cretaceous - beginning of the Paleogene periods, the modern post-Gondwana continents and their parts - South America, Africa (without the Atlas Mountains), Arabia, Australia, Antarctica - were isolated.

Climate

Climatic data on the state of the Earth at that time also reveal to us additional opportunities for knowledge of interest to us.

In the Terminal Riphean (680-570 Ma ago), large areas of Europe and North America were covered by the extensive Lapland glaciation. Glacial deposits of this age are known in the Urals, in the Tien Shan, on the Russian platform (Belarus), in Scandinavia (Norway), in Greenland and the Rocky Mountains.

In the Ordovician period (500-440 million years ago), Australia was located near South Pole, and northwestern Africa - in the region of the pole itself, which is confirmed by the signs of widespread glaciation imprinted in the Ordovician rocks of Africa.

In the Devonian period (from 410 million to 350 million years ago), the equator was located at an angle of 55 - 65 ° to the modern one and passed approximately through the Caucasus, the Russian platform and southern Scandinavia. The North Pole was in the Pacific Ocean within 0 - 30 ° north latitude and 120-150 ° east longitude(in the region of Japan).

Therefore, on the Russian platform, the climate was near-equatorial - dry and hot, with a wide variety of the organic world. Part of the territory of Siberia was occupied by seas, the water temperature of which did not go below 25 ° C. Tropical (humid) belt, at different times of the Devonian period extended from the modern West Siberian Plain in the north to the southwestern edge of the Russian platform. Based on the paleomagnetic study of rocks, it has been established that throughout most of the Paleozoic and North America was located in the equatorial zone. Fossil organisms and widespread limestones of this time testify to the dominance of warm shallow seas in the Ordovician.

On the contrary, in the territory of Gondwana, the climate was polar. In South Africa (in the Cape Mountains), in the Table Mountain Formation, in the Congo Basin and in southern Brazil, there are glacial formations (tillites) - witnesses of a cold circumpolar climate. Extensive glaciation developed in the Proterozoic and Upper Carboniferous. In South Australia, China, Norway, South Africa, southern Europe, in South America, signs of Ordovician glaciation were found within this belt. Traces of Upper Carboniferous glaciation are known in Central and South Africa, southern South America, India and Australia. Glaciations were established in the Lower Proterozoic of North America, in the Upper Riphean (Riphean - 1650-570 Ma) of Africa and Australia, in the Vendian (680-570 Ma) of Europe, Asia and North America, in the Ordovician of Africa, in the late Carboniferous and early Permian on the mainland of Gondwana. The organic world of this belt was distinguished by its poor composition. In the Carboniferous and Permian periods, a peculiar flora of the temperate and cold zone developed on the mainland of Gondwana, which was characterized by an abundance of glossopteris and horsetails.

In the Devonian, the northern (arid - arid) belt covered Angarida (North Asia) and folded structures adjacent to it from the south and east dominated the continents: Angara, Kazakh, Baltic and North American.

In Colorado (part of the former Lawrence), fragments of the most primitive vertebrates - jawless (ostrocoderms) - were found in the Ordovician sandstones.

After the end of the cycle, geosynclinal development can be repeated, but always some part of the geosynclinal areas at the end of the next cycle turns into a young platform. In this regard, during geological history the area occupied by geosynclines (seas) decreased, while the area of ​​platforms increased. It was the geosynclinal systems that were the place of formation and further growth continental crust with its granite layer.

The periodic nature of vertical movements during a tectonic cycle (predominantly subsidence at the beginning and predominantly uplift at the end of the cycle) each time led to corresponding changes in the surface topography, to a change in transgressions and regressions of the sea. The same periodic movements influenced the nature of the deposited sedimentary rocks, as well as the climate, which experienced periodic changes. Already in the Precambrian, warm epochs were interrupted by glacial ones. In the Paleozoic glaciation, at times Brazil, South Africa, India and Australia. The last glaciation (in the Northern Hemisphere) was in the Anthropogen.

Fauna

The position of the continents considered above is confirmed by the data of faunistic zoning, according to which the land of the Earth is divided into four faunistic kingdoms: Arktogea, Paleogea, Neogea, Notogea. Antarctic land, inhabited mainly by marine animals, is not included in any of the kingdoms.

Arktogea ("northern land") with the center of grouping on the Russian platform also includes the Holarctic, Indo-Malay, Ethiopian regions and occupies Eurasia (excluding Hindustan and Indochina), North America, North Africa (including the Sahara). Animal world Arktogea is characterized by a common origin. Only placental mammals live in Arktogea.

Neogea (" new earth”, Later in time, formed from the decay products of Gondwana) occupies South, Central America from Baja California and the southern part of the Mexican Highlands in the north to 40 ° S latitude. in the south and the islands adjacent to Central America. Placentals are widespread.
Notogea ("southern land") occupies Australia, New Zealand and the islands of Oceania. Prolonged isolation of Notogea led to the formation of a fauna rich in endemics (isolated species). The number of placental mammals is relatively small: mice, bats, canines.

Paleogea occupies mainly tropical regions of the Eastern Hemisphere. The Paleogea is characterized by groups of animals of the ancient fauna of Gondwana - its Brazilian-African continent: ostriches, lungfish, turtles, as well as proboscis, great apes, carnivores, etc.

A. Yu. Rozanov

What happened 600 million years ago

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE USSR

Executive editor Academician B.S.Sokolov

Reviewers:

Dr. Biol. Sci. V. N. Shimansky geol.-min. M.A. Fedonkin

Introduction

In the history of the development of life on Earth, there were several events that can be considered cardinal. Not to mention the very origin of life, about which there are many hypotheses, very important in history were:

Transition from prokaryotes (or non-nuclear unicellular organisms) to eukaryotes (unicellular organisms with a nucleus);

Transition from unicellular organisms to multicellular ones;

The ability of organisms to build a skeleton.

It is about this last event, which took place about 600 million years ago, that we are talking about in our book. This boundary is usually referred to in the specialized literature as the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary (Fig. 1).

The time from which organisms began to build a skeleton to the present day is called the Phanerozoic. It is this Phanerozoic history of the organic world that has been studied most reliably, since since the appearance of skeletal organisms, they began to be easily buried in rocks, and during geological surveys, specialists find the remains of these skeletons in large quantities. For a long time, mankind drew knowledge about the history of the organic world, as a rule only by studying organic remains from Phanerozoic rocks.

Until recently, all courses in paleontology and historical geology around the world were provided with information on the evolution of life almost exclusively from Phanerozoic history. However, the more material accumulated on the most early stages the Phanerozoic, the more the exceptional richness of the early Cambrian fauna became clearer. V last years it became clear that almost all types of organisms that exist today existed then. Naturally, the question arose! “Have they been before? And why don't we find their remnants in more ancient layers? "

To the person evaluating the duration various phenomena on the time scale of your life, it is very difficult to perceive millions and billions of years. However, to give an idea of ​​the rate of change in organic world we will have to consider the factor of time precisely in such categories as millions and billions of years. How large these numbers are, you can imagine from some comparisons.

From the moment of its appearance on Earth, mankind has passed its entire history in just over 1 million years, and the first life on Earth appeared more than 3-3.5 billion years ago. The mammoths known to everyone died out long ago, but that was only about 10 thousand years ago, and the famous dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the Earth about 65-70 million years ago.

Rice. 1. Geochronological scale... On the right, the interval around the Precambrian-Cambrian border is shown in more detail.

But back to the Cambrian-Precambrian border. It is probably appropriate to recall that today the concept of "Precambrian and Cambrian border" for all geologists and paleontologists has a very definite real tangible meaning. This happened because scientists were able to develop a principle for its implementation and are currently concerned only with choosing the best standard in one of the regions of the world. But if you go back 20-25 years ago, the picture was completely different.

A special symposium in Paris in 1957 brought together the world's largest experts in Late Precambrian and Early Cambrian stratigraphy and paleontology. Many very different options have been expressed for the possible recognition of this border. Moreover, most of all it was said about the need to take into account various kinds of geological phenomena, such as angular unconformities, breaks, glacial deposits, and least of all hopes were on the paleontological method. There were only rare enthusiasts in the person of the French G. A. Schuber and P. Jupe and the American G. Wheeler, who called to pay tribute to the paleontological data.

The conclusion of the symposium in Paris was extremely pessimistic. It was written in the decisions that the symposium does not consider itself competent to propose a standard of the series, where the issue of the lower boundary of the Cambrian can be resolved unambiguously, and generally does not consider it possible to resolve this issue at least to some extent at the present time.

But the next 10 years led to dramatic changes in the attitude of specialists to the problem of the Cambrian and Precambrian. In 1962, a group of very young Soviet specialists from the Geological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, after analyzing the material, suggested that the problem is much simpler than it seemed to experts with sophisticated experience.

First, they showed, only the paleontological method can be used to solve this problem. And secondly, they showed that there is a borderline at which very many groups of fossils acquire the ability to build a skeleton, and thus this borderline is well recognized and can be taken as the desired borderline. Senior colleagues said that such simplicity of solving the problem is inherent in youth and that, of course, the situation is, of course, much more complicated.

In 1966, Acad. VV Menner wrote that “there are no two specialists who would have a common opinion on this issue” (meaning the question of the Cambrian-Precambrian border), VV Menner was obviously right and wrong at the same time. Indeed, the opinions of the scientists differed greatly, but these young specialists at that time certainly had one opinion. In the same year, their joint monograph was published, and already in the next, 1967, at the All-Union meeting in Ufa on the report on the Cambrian and Precambrian boundary made by these experts, it was said that this is so obvious that it is not worth breaking into open doors.

But the views of Soviet researchers on this matter at that time were not yet shared by their foreign colleagues. In 1966, during my stay in England, the then president of the Cambrian Subcommittee of the International Stratigraphic Commission, James Stubblefield, discussing the results of research carried out in the USSR, proposed organizing an international excursion to Yakutia, where the best sections of transitional strata from the Precambrian to the Cambrian were located. He believed that the correctness of the conclusions made by Soviet experts should be confirmed by an actual show on the spot. The skepticism of foreign specialists can only now be understood, since in those years, including during the Paris Symposium, materials on Siberia, Mongolia, China and Newfoundland were not known. The fact that it is in these regions that the most representative sections are located was discovered by scientists all over the world only later, in the 70s and 80s.

A major milestone in the history of research on the Cambrian-Precambrian boundary was the publication of a large monograph by Soviet specialists "The Tommot Stage and the Problem of the Lower Cambrian Boundary." world material. This work has become a reference book for all researchers, Soviet and foreign, dealing with the problem of the Cambrian and Precambrian boundary. It was in this work that all the main theoretical provisions were formulated, which later became the basis for the decisions of the International Working Group on the Cambrian and Precambrian Boundary, created in 1972 in Montreal at the International Geological Congress on the initiative of Academicians V.V. Menner, B.S. Sokolov and prof. M. Glessner. Will pass yet more than 10 years, and this book will be republished in the USA, and foreign experts will call it “our Bible”.

Since 1973, when the International Working Group first visited the Siberian open-pit mines, a huge research as most The Working Group and national working groups. In 1979 in Cambridge and in 1983 in Bristol, the results were summed up and the basic principles of the border were formulated. The level became clear to everyone, and it remains to choose a reference section. And after many years of selection, only three applicants remained: Siberia, Newfoundland and China. But, as the reader understands, the choice of a standard is already a task that goes far beyond simply scientific tasks... When choosing stratigraphic standards, various motives play a role, such as availability, preservation, etc.

The title of the book gives the figure 600 million years ago. But the reader should treat this figure with condescension, since the real absolute dating of the Cambrian and Precambrian border is still not very clear, and the difference in representations is up to 70 million years, and maybe even a little more.

In the most famous recent textbooks, summaries and manuals, the figure was 570 million years. But this is a kind of averaged view, which rather reflects our temporal perception of this milestone than the real state of affairs.

The most difficult moment in dating the Cambrian and Precambrian boundary was that the figures obtained for rocks actually located on the Cambrian and Precambrian boundary were recognized as poor quality in the classical sections of Siberia and actually amounted to 520-530 Ma, which was usually considered already the lower reaches of the Middle Cambrian. ... Other values, close to 570-550 Ma, as a rule, were obtained from rocks, the stratigraphic position of which was not well proven.

How could life on Earth survive during the monstrous cold snaps that several times covered our planet 600-800 million years ago? Has the Earth experienced total glaciation - right up to the establishment of ice cover throughout the entire ocean? The model proposed by Canadian researchers shows that the ocean, apparently, never completely froze, and the Earth was not an ice ball, but a "slushy" one. Sharp climate fluctuations in that distant epoch were the result of the interaction of purely physical processes and the vital activity of bacteria, which carried out the mineralization (oxidation) of dissolved in the ocean organic matter... Cooling contributed to the enrichment of oxygen in the water column, and thereby created favorable conditions for bacteria, which, while processing organic matter, absorb oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. Getting from the water into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide created Greenhouse effect, that is, it kept heat at the surface.

There was a particularly cold period in the history of the Earth, characterized by the most powerful glaciations. This time is called the "cryogenic period of the Neoproterozoic era" (see Cryogenian). It lasted quite a long time - 220 million years (850-630 million years ago) and was characterized by an alternation of small warming and extreme cold snaps. On land represented by remnants the most ancient continent- Rodinia, the thickness of the ice in some places reached 6 km, and the ice itself reached tropical latitudes. The ocean level then dropped by a kilometer (for comparison, let's say that in the last significant glaciation, which took place 20 thousand years ago, it decreased only by 120 m). Some researchers believe that during the Neoproterozoic glaciations, ice covered not only the land, but the entire ocean.

The white surface of our planet, which at that time resembled a snowball (see: hypothesis of "Snowball Earth", "Snowball Earth hypothesis"), reflected well the incident sunlight and, accordingly, almost did not heat up. This cold state of the Earth was very stable. Explaining how the planet was able to get out of it was not easy. It was usually assumed that this happened due to a series of powerful volcanic eruptions, accompanied by the release of a huge amount of greenhouse gases (primarily CO 2) into the atmosphere, the fallout of ash and acid rains on the Earth's surface, white from snow and ice. The increase in the content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere made it possible to retain heat, and the ash prevented the reflection of sunlight, which led to the gradual thawing of the Earth's surface. Life at this time was represented only by bacteria and small unicellular algae... The first large multicellular organisms (the so-called Ediacaran fauna) appeared only at the very end of the Neoproterozoic. Although bacteria and protists are much more resistant to adverse effects than multicellular organisms, the possibility of their survival under conditions of prolonged global glaciation is highly questionable.

However, the difficulties of the traditionally proposed explanation were avoided within the framework of the new model, which has already been dubbed as the "Slushball Earth" - in contrast to the "Snowball Earth". The authors of this model, Canadian researchers Richard Peltier, Yonggang Liu, and John W. Crowley - all from the University of Toronto Physics Department (Ontario, Canada) - assumed that the ocean never froze completely ... It always contained fairly large open areas where photosynthesis of phytoplankton continued and where intensive gas exchange took place between the water column and the atmosphere. When constructing the model, both data on the physical processes that determine the climate and ideas about the vital activity of organisms that lived in the ocean were used.

The scale of the formation of organic matter in distant geological epochs is usually judged by the "isotopic" - by the relative content of the stable isotope of carbon 13 C in sedimentary rocks. The fact is that in the process of photosynthesis, phytoplankton the light isotope of carbon 12 C. Accordingly, if organic matter is deposited somewhere, it turns out to be depleted in 13 C. And in the water where photosynthetic organisms lived, the content of the heavier isotope 13 C was, on the contrary, increased. If carbonates were formed there, then they were also distinguished by an increased content of 13 C (in fact, we judge the composition of water from these carbonates many millions of years ago).

The organic matter synthesized by phytoplankton precipitates after cell death or remains in the water column in the form of dissolved organic matter, which is usually estimated as dissolved organic carbon - Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC). There is much more carbon in this form in the ocean today than in the bodies of organisms or in suspended particles of detritus. And in the Neoproterozoic era, when there were no planktonic animals that consumed phytoplankton, such dissolved organic matter was significantly (by orders of magnitude) greater. But dissolved organic matter is food for bacteria, which, when oxygen is present in the environment, decompose (mineralize). In the process of breathing bacteria, carbon dioxide CO 2 is released, which can diffuse into the atmosphere.

In their model, Peltier and his co-authors proceed from the assumption that cooling contributes to the enrichment of ocean surface waters with oxygen - in cold water oxygen, like other gases, dissolves much better than warm. And the more oxygen, the more efficiently the activity of bacteria proceeds, mineralizing dissolved organic matter and emitting carbon dioxide, which, getting from the ocean into the atmosphere, creates a greenhouse effect and does not allow the ocean to cool down too much. This is how the feedback works, preventing extreme irreversible cooling.

The model (actually consisting of several blocks: each side has its own submodel) predicts stable fluctuations only when it is clear physical processes heat exchanges are associated with the processes of mineralization of organic matter carried out by bacteria. I do not exclude that the Peltier model will soon be taken up by supporters of the Gaia hypothesis (once put forward by James Lovelock). Indeed, in accordance with this model, it turns out that organisms in the course of their life support the planet (Gaia) in a state suitable for later life... In fact, this is one of the cornerstones of the concept of Gaia.

(Original text replaced by revision 4)

Rice. 1 Evolution of the planet Earth. On the left is a part of the Sun's core, "ejected" 600 million years ago - the "newborn" Earth. In the middle is the "plasticine planet". On the right is a modern globe.

Birth of the Earth

Solar system before Earth:
Pluto - Neptune - Uranus - Saturn - Jupiter - "Ceres' Stone Belt" - Mars - Sun

The "total" gravitational field of the planets retiring to a critical distance provoked another ejection of a small part of the Sun's core. The ejection formed into a ball and burst into bright light. The luminous star - the newborn Earth, moved very far away, and, having reached the orbit of Uranus, returned to the Sun, making a half-turn around it, again flew away in an elliptical orbit. But gradually the orbit of the star - the Earth becomes smaller and smaller until it became a circular orbit very close to the Sun. Soon this small star went out, turning into a planet.

This is how the planet Earth was born. (Fig. 1 left) As matter arises, the orbits of the planets move away from the Sun.

Age of the Earth

The escaped part of the Sun's core, the future Venus, flying past the Earth, in an elongated elliptical orbit, scorched it radioactive radiation... This happened 410 million years ago.

The escaped part of the Sun's core, the future Mercury, also scorched the Earth with "black" radiation. It happened 220 million years ago.

It was at these times 410 and 220 million years ago that scientists discovered very high radioactivity in the layers of the earth. If we take into account these two figures, and the known distance of the orbits of the Earth, Venus and Mercury from the Sun, it turns out that the approximate age of the Earth is about 600 million years.

Unlike the giant planets, the terrestrial planets, due to their small size, have great difficulties with the birth of satellites. Mars was almost torn apart by the ejection of the planet's satellite. Venus and Mercury, "pressed" by the rapidly growing mass of the Sun, could not have satellites at all.

Plasticine planet

Our planet, many millions of years ago, was not at all the same as it is now, but much smaller, and not only in diameter, but also in mass.

The continent of Pangea was indeed a whole continent, but not an island in the ocean of Panthalassa, but was the earth's crust of a planet with a smaller diameter. That is, the existing continents today are “fragments” of the pre-existing whole earth's crust, a much smaller planet than the modern Earth.

Let's do an experiment. For this we need a globe of the earth and multi-colored plasticine.
Let's make a plasticine ball, much smaller than a globe.
One by one, putting plasticine plates on the globe, we will make patterns of the continents.
After that, we are trying to place the patterns of the continents on a plasticine ball, gradually increasing the diameter of the ball.
We achieve such a ball size so that all continents become tightly adjacent to each other.

Consider the resulting mosaic of continents on a plasticine planet:
North America is tightly connected with South America if you remove Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Africa fits tightly between North America and South America. Eurasia is located north of Africa and east of North America. Greenland is located between North America and Eurasia. (Fig. 4)
East Africa- Madagascar, India, Australia, Antarctica. (Fig. 1)
Antarctica is tightly blended between Australia, Africa and South America. (Fig. 2)
The islands of New Zealand, the Indonesian, Philippine Islands, the Japanese Islands, Sakhalin Island and the Kamchatka Peninsula are located east of Eurasia and Antarctica.
On the opposite side of the plasticine planet (Fig. 1), the continents gathered in such a way that an almost round gap was formed - the future Pacific Ocean... (Fig. 3)

All continents are tightly adjacent to each other. Except for the gap where India rammed Eurasia. And there is one more gap - the future Mediterranean Sea, a separate story about it.

Slightly misplaced the axis of rotation on the plasticine planet. It should pass through the center of Antarctica on one side, and through the island of Greenland on the other. Almost the same as on a modern globe.

The diameter of the modern globe is 12700 km, from the proportion we get that the diameter of the plasticine planet, with tightly docked continents, is 8700 km. And the diameter of the hole in the earth's crust is 6000 km.!

The birth of the moon

We already know the age of the Earth. Now we have to find out the age of the plasticine planet with a huge hole in the earth's crust.

The history of the development of the Earth's atmosphere will help us in this.
Scientists, studying the gas bubbles of ancient glaciers, have come to the conclusion that the gas content is constantly changing. As you know, carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases constantly present in the atmosphere. It acts like a blanket to maintain a higher temperature. When the level carbon dioxide decreases, the climate becomes colder, and vice versa, with an increase in CO2, the temperature on the globe also rises.

Bob Berker, based on the study of the carbon dioxide content in ancient glaciers, built a curve of CO2 dependence on the course of time.
From 600 million years ago to 300 million years ago, the level of carbon dioxide becomes gigantic and amounts to 20 conventional units. 300 million years ago, the graph of the CO2 content drops vertically to zero. Then, starting from 250 million years ago, the level of carbon dioxide rises, but no more than 5-7 units. The atmosphere today contains about 1-1.2 units of carbon dioxide.

What happened to the atmosphere 300 million years ago, when it almost completely disappeared from planet Earth?

Yes, it was at this time, 300 million years ago, that a part of the Earth's core was ejected, an incredibly gigantic force. Part of the Earth's core, breaking through the earth's crust and scattering it, burst out with such force and initial speed that, overcoming the Earth's gravity, it became a satellite of the Sun. It was this emission that blew away almost the entire atmosphere of the Earth! The giant ejection gave a jet acceleration to the planet Earth, she flew with more speed in a new elliptical orbit, leaving behind an atmospheric plume.

So it appeared new satellite Sun - Moon, born of the planet Earth.
This was the "Main Event" in the entire history of the Earth.
And in the solar system it was an extraordinary, isolated event. The giant planets often threw out a part of their core, but they never "let go" of their satellites.
The main event - the birth of the Moon, destroyed almost all earthly life. And it's just a miracle that she stayed on our planet.

The diameter of the newborn Earth

The difference between the diameters of the modern globe (Fig. 1 on the right) and the plasticine planet (in the middle): 12700 km. - 8700 km. = 4000 km.
If 4000 km are also subtracted from the diameter of the plasticine planet, then we get: 8700 km. - 4000 km. = 4700 km., Approximately this size should be the ball of the emerging Earth. But since in the first period of time (300 million years) the planet grew much slower than after the appearance of the Moon and the cracking of the continents, we take the diameter of the Earth's sphere (Fig. 1 on the left), 6000 km. It turns out that Earth in its entire history has more than doubled.
Growth of the diameter of the planet Earth (Fig. 1)
F 6000 km. - F 8700 km. - F 12700 km.

Newborn Moon Diameter

The diameter of the modern moon is 3475 km
From the proportion we get:
F 6000 km. - F 8700 km.
X - F 3475 km.

X = F newborn Moon = 2396 km.

But the Moon shows no signs of emerging matter. There are no earthquakes, no volcanic activity, no gas evolution. The modern moon is matter that has arisen. Therefore, the approximate diameter of the escaped part of the Earth's core (the newborn Moon) is 2500 km, which corresponds to a hole in the earth's crust equal to 6000 km.

"Light" plasticine planet

The gravitational field of any planet is determined by the mass of its super-compressed core. If the core is removed from the planet, then its gravitational field will become hundreds of times smaller. (If we stand at the foot of the hewn end of a mountain ridge, then we will not experience any attraction to this wall, although its mass is very large. But if we stand near the core of the earth, then we will be flattened to a molecular state.)
Any "active" space object grows, increasing its mass and volume, as much as it is allowed to do by receding neighboring space objects.
The Earth, during the birth of the Moon, lost a significant part of its mass. Started active process restoring the mass of the Earth (for a given space environment). The core began to produce a large amount of "light" magma.

The increasing distance from the core to the surface of the planet weakens the force of gravity on the surface of the continents.

Despite the fact that the diameter of the planet was almost 3 times larger than the modern Moon, its gravity on the surface was 2 times less than that of the Moon.

The era of giant animals on Earth

How could there be giant dinosaurs, the weight of which, in the conditions of modern Earth, would be 70 tons, and Argentinosaurus would weigh 110 tons. The maximum weight of a modern land animal in the African elephant is 7.7 tons, and it is experiencing "difficulties" from the gravitational field of the modern Earth. Moves slowly and may suffocate during sleep from its large body weight.

This is explained by the fact that at the time of the prosperity of dinosaurs, the force of gravity on the surface of the Earth was 10-15 times less than on the modern Earth. That is why giant dinosaurs felt comfortable and were very mobile.

So, we found out that the planet Earth appeared from the depths of the Sun - 600 million years ago.
The moon appeared from the bowels of the Earth - 300 million years ago.
It took 300 million years from the birth of the Earth (Fig. 1 on the left) to the plasticine planet (Fig. 1 in the center), and 300 million years have passed from the plasticine planet to the modern globe.
The diameter of the newborn moon is approximately 2500 km.
Receding Earth's crust from a small core of the Earth has reduced the force of gravity on the surface of continents. It was during these times that giant animals flourished.
Throughout its history, the Earth has been growing, increasing its mass and volume.

Literature

1. Bob Burker. Carbon dioxide content in ancient glaciers.
2. Stuart Atkinson. Astronomy. Encyclopedia of the world around.

Reviews

Valery, you have a well-developed sense of analysis and fantasy too. It turns out that the moon is the "spit" of our planet. How much energy was needed to throw out this clot. Now there are many different assumptions about the structure of the Earth. At first we believed - we thought that "the core is boiling inside the Earth - iron is being boiled there ..." Now, it seems to me, it might be empty there. Some facts speak for this. Of course, I am not an expert in this matter, but maybe this led you, Valery, to such a hypothesis about the appearance of the moon. There are even "holes" at the poles of the Earth, which provides the Earth's whirlpool. But anything is possible, but it's still fantastic. After all, there are now such hypotheses that the moon - spaceship... But not a ship, so something like that - for example, a space base. Best regards, A.D.