Monday, January 14, 2013

What if all evolution happened in one day?


Summary
What if the earth's existence, which is over 4.5 billion years, was compress into 24 hours? At 4 AM, the first single-celled organisms would arise. For a long time, life would remain this simple. At 1 PM, when one cell ate another, the first eukaryotic organism would be formed. At 6:30 PM, colonies of eukaryotes become the first multicellular organisms. Then, at 8:30, sea plants begin to exist. Then, at 8:50, animal life begins and rapid diversification starts as well. At 9:57, plants, followed by animals, start to go on land. At 10:24, winged insects appear. At 11:41, dinosaurs go extinct, and with just a few minutes left, mammals take over, and with only one minute and seventeen seconds left in the day, humans arise.

Relevance
This video gives perspective as to just how long the evolution we are currently studying has been going on. Human evolution has been going on for an incredibly short time, relative to all life, and mammals have only been around for "19 minutes." Although it seems as though evolution has been happening for a long time,  in the grand scheme of things it is incredibly short. This video also shows how evolution speeds up -- the first single-celled prokaryotes were around for "9 hours," with little evolution. This is around 28 times longer than just mammals, who have been evolving very rapidly.

Video: "The Evolution of Life on Earth"
Author: AsapSCIENCE
Date: 28 November 2012
Link: http://youtu.be/H2_6cqa2cP4

2 comments:

  1. What were the first simple-celled organisms called? If they had a name.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What are the real time periods called that these times refer to?

    ReplyDelete