Did burrowing animals cause the end of the microbial mat era, or did the macrobial mats disappear for some other reason, which allowed burrowing animals to evolve?
>>5046314More likely that predators pushed for prey adaptations to borrow which directly caused macrobial mats to disappear. The same reason exoskeletons evolved.
demiurge changed it so that reddit creatures like redditalocaris could pop up
>>5046314Bumping this thread because I'm completely fucking enthralled by, "something new evolved that completely changed everything in the biosphere forever", but I don't know shit about paleontology and want to know more events.
>>5046497The arms race that is the predator prey system is quite amazing! Thanks to this we even know how jaws developed and chitinous exteriors hardened. I recommend searching more about it! Im not sure if the Great Oxigenation Event is as thrilling as this but could be another case of a tactical arms race... kind of... >post an anomalocaris so the nautilus grifter cries
for me it's that microbiota, during its initial explosion, exhaled oxygen as a toxic by-product instead of needing it for respiration, and they exhaled so much that it caused the first mass extinction event by over-oxygenating the atmosphere and oceans.
OC
>>5046314I wish I could be more frond-like in my daily life
>>5046519>>5046591>Great Oxidation EventNo, yeah, 100%, shit like that. That's what I'm after; The Great Oxidation Event, The Cambrian Substrate Revolution, more of that.I heard at one point that when trees originally evolved nothing could eat them, they spread across the planet uncontested, and turned the world into a highly oxygenated tinder box with their dying inedible bodies. Supposedly, grass took all the silica? Or maybe it made too much bioavailable (I can't remember which)? And it fucked with the economy of shellfish? I crave those Wikipedia Articles.
>>5046620tour de franc
>>5046606upvoted!!!!
>>5046739I tip my fedora to you good gentlesir
>>5046643>it fucked with the economy of shellfishAmazing. I didnt know about those details. That's pre-carboniferous?
>>5046643trees taking over is why we have anthracite
>>5046497>something new evolved that completely changed everything in the biosphere foreverHonestly sounds like humans. Climate change is bad but maybe not as bad as we think. Humans create plastic and in 100 million years creatures are made of it.
>>5046775
>>5046775Pretty sure that would be the carboniferous. If I remember correctly, the source of coal is all the trees that grew and would die to natural causes such as breaking in the wind an falling. Because nothing could break them down the dead wood just continued to build up and work its way into the soil.
>>5046606Nice argument. Unfortunaly I already depicted you as the frond-like animal and me as the carnivorous animal.
>>5046497A literal single genus of coarse haired ape managed, in a couple of million years, not only to be the 2nd most dominant species of vertebrate in terms of biomass but also to force the evolution of the most dominant vertebrate species and not only single handedly caused a new geological epoch but pretty much accelerated geological time division itself. An entire phylum of hyperabundant autotrophic bacteria or multiple phyla of animals causing mass extinction and global environmental and ecological turnarounds is nowhere near as unbelievable if you put them in perspective.
