What was the Silurian landscape like?In the past, it was assumed that it was basically dry and "dead". without a significant number of living organisms that stand out for being multicellular, eukaryotic, and that carry out photosynthesis and bla bla.Well, today it is said that the environment was more perished with a "proto-forest" (or lawn) with high quantities of plants and even small worms living in the groundwell paleoanons, can you give me some light???
There wasn't actually so much land, the seas were higher and the land was lower relative to today so it was a bit of a double whammy
Lawn is probably a good word for the land ecosystems. This is when non-vascular plants like mosses and the like gave rise to vascular, larger upwards-reaching plants, surrounded by fungi who would have co-evolved with plants, providing scarce nutrients to the plants and getting plant waste products in return. One thing to note is that at this time, even the vascular plants would highly resemble what we would think of today as fungal shapes. a bulbous head and one or very few stems. This is a common Silurian plant form 'cooksonia' and there were others which would have had filaments, thorns, or other protrusions not quite yet resembling proper leaves. Photosynthesis was done in the stems, and not yet in secondary structures to it except incidentally early on.
Earthworms are about half as old as the Silurian period, and their ability to eat soil and process nutrients relies on rather fertile and well tilled soil. There would have been worm-like myriapods like millipedes and some silverfish-like arthropods scuttling around, certainly.
>>4781813Scorpions appeared more or less as they are in the Silurian.
>>4783073>>4783085>>4783096>>4783300Thank you guys!
>>4783085And about the land? Just a ugly desert?>>4783096In your logic, there was not earthworms
>>4783325There were majestic mountain ranges, highly-eroded smooth rock pillars and boulders, deep canyons and gorges. There were lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and everything in between.The terrain would be in different places and heights and depths than modern day but the same ingredients would be there.One thing you would notice is that the soil would be far more sterile, muddy, and grey until things developed further. Early plants and fungi would not be nearly as capable of supporting soil on slopes like they do today, so mudslides and slumps would be drastically more common in the landscape. You would see more deserts, probably anywhere in the shadow of a mountain range that would divert rainclouds.Heavy rain areas and coastal areas would have moderate plant coverage and these would probably overlook shallow bays with raft-like bacterial mats in peaceful areas, or rocky areas that produce lots of spray and help keep the plants wet. These plants would follow rivers and streams upstream over time and gradually bring life inland, but it wouldnt be able to protect itself from drying out very effectively for the time being.
>>4783356>There were majestic mountain rangesbigger or smaller than today's mountain ranges?
>>4783356So everywhere kind of looked like a mix between Mongolian steppes, Kazakhstan mountains and the Atacama desert?
>>4784102It's difficult to say, because the length of time contained in just the Silurian is enough to build a mountain or erode it away.I would say that, because more impressive known prehistoric mountain ranges had not yet been formed, there would be fewer ranges, and they would be much shorter, Im pretty confident in that basic estimate although I haven't done research on this to be sure.The actual rockiness and ruggedness of the terrain would vary wildly, depending on when exactly in the 25 Million years you were, since uplift and erosion would happen in independent events around the globe>>4784136I dont know if something as highly lifted and folded as the mountains of kazakhstan would be around. Those ranges were the result of the Indian subcontinent colliding into the Asian continent at low speeds but with an insane amount of inertia. Continents bumped and shifted during this time but those are really a spectacular range of mountains to compare to. Much of the continental shelf would have been underwater, hiding from view, so I think what you might see more of is relatively isolated and weathered mountain regions in surrounding highlands like the mountains in the Ozark Plateau.
