Before humans appeared, the world was completely different. Our planet did not always look the way it does now. It has gone through some of the most incredible changes in the last 4.5 billion years - and they are completely indescribable. But we will try to describe them. If you could go back millions of years in time, you wouldn't just see a few other animals. You would discover a completely alien world right from the pages of science fiction.
All over the planet - giant mushrooms
About 400 million years ago, trees were about the height of a man's waist. Most of them were one meter in height, and other plants were not much larger - but not mushrooms. At some point in Earth's history, prototaxite mushrooms were at every corner of the globe and towered over any other living creature.
These mushrooms had legs 8 meters high and 1 meter wide. Yes, they will not be taller or thicker than many modern trees. But at that time they were the largest plants on the planet, surpassing all others in growth by a good 6 meters.
They did not have such large caps on the top, which we are used to seeing relative to the stem of the current mushroom. Instead, they were just a leg - just a large mushroom pillar sticking out of the ground. And they were all over the place. We found fossils of these things on every part of the planet. That is, on the planet of the past, there were completely forests of giant mushrooms.
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The sky was orange and the oceans were green
The sky was not always blue. For approximately 3.7 billion years, the oceans are believed to be green, the continents are black, and the sky is bright orange.
Then the composition of the Earth was completely different, and we have every reason to believe that the color scheme was also completely different. The oceans were green because iron formations dissolved in the sea water, spilling green rust, the color of a rusty copper coin. The continents were black because they were covered with cooling lava and there were no plants on them.
And the sky wasn't always blue. There is a lot of oxygen in the atmosphere today, but 3.7 billion years ago there was not much oxygen. The sky was mostly methane. When light from the sun shines through the methane atmosphere, it turns the sky orange.
The planet stank of rotten eggs
When we talk about what the planet was, we are guided not only by guesses and theories. Scientists are almost certainly sure they know what the planet smelled like in the past. If anyone had sniffed the air 1.9 billion years ago, they would have clearly distinguished the smell of rotten eggs.
This is because the oceans were full of gaseous bacteria that feed on the salt in seawater. The bacteria took in salt and released hydrogen sulfide, filling the air with the characteristic stench we associate with eggs, which are all.
And this scientists are still trying to put it mildly. Let's be honest - we have creatures that emit hydrogen sulfide into the air on a daily basis. We can say that the world of the past smelled of farting.
The planet was purple
When the first plants began to sprout on Earth, they were not green. One theory is that they were purple. If you looked at our planet from space three to four billion years ago, it would be purple as much as it is green today.
It is believed that the first forms of life on Earth absorbed the light of the Sun in a slightly different way. Modern plants are green because they use chlorophyll to absorb sunlight, but early plants used retinas and had a characteristic purple hue.
Perhaps purple would have been our color for a long time. About 1.6 billion years ago, after the plants covering the planet turned green, our oceans also turned purple. A thick layer of purple sulfur covered the surface of the water, and there was enough of it to color all the oceans purple and make them incredibly toxic.
The world was like a snowball
We all know that our planet went through ice ages. However, there is clear evidence that 716 million years ago, winter was at its peak, like in some kind of cartoon. This period is called the "Snowball Earth" period, because the Earth was almost completely covered with ice and from space looked like a giant snowball.
The world was so cold that there were glaciers at the equator. Scientists have proven this by finding traces of ancient glaciers in Canada. It may be hard to believe, but 700 million years ago this part of Canada was at the equator. The warmest places on Earth were as cold as the modern Arctic. However, now scientists no longer think that the Earth looked like a white snowball, because 716 million years ago another horror was happening to it. Volcanoes erupted constantly, filling the skies with ash and mixing ice, snow and ash into one dirty grayish mass.
Acid rain has been falling on Earth for 100,000 years
Ultimately, the Snowball Earth period ended. But the horrors did not stop there. It is believed that after this the Earth went through a period of "intense chemical weathering". Acid rain has continually washed the earth from heaven for 100,000 years.
The acid rain was so heavy and pungent that it melted the glaciers covering the planets. But every cloud has a silver lining - in the process, nutrients were sent into the ocean, which allowed life to appear, sent oxygen into the atmosphere and ensured the Cambrian explosion of life on Earth.
But before that, the air was full of carbon dioxide, and acid rain poisoned the ocean. Until life scattered across the Earth, it was a poisonous, inhospitable desert.
The Arctic was green and full of life
About 50 million years ago, the Arctic was a completely different place. This time was called the early Eocene, and the world was much warmer than it became later. Palm trees could be found in Alaska, and crocodiles swam off the coast of Greenland.
Even the planet's northern cap was green. It is believed that the Arctic Ocean was a giant pool of fresh water and life was in full swing. The water was full of green algae and green ferns bloomed all over the Arctic.
But it was difficult to call those times the tropics. Back then, the warmest months in the Arctic were around 20 degrees Celsius. And yet the northern parts of our world were full of giant turtles, alligators, the first hippos that got used to living in eternal winter or darkness.
The dust covered the sun
When the asteroid responsible for the death of the dinosaurs fell to Earth 65 million years ago, it did not end with one fall. The world has become an eerie, dark place.
The fall of the asteroid sent dust, soil and rocks straight into the sky and even into space. Tons of them remained in the atmosphere and surrounded the planet with a massive layer of dust. For the creatures that were on Earth, the Sun itself disappeared from heaven.
All this did not last long - several months. But when the giant cloud of dust settled, the sulfuric acid remained in the stratosphere and got into the clouds. They became so thick that acid rains fell on the Earth for ten years.
Molten Magma Rain
That very asteroid, however, was nonsense compared to the one that fell to the planet four billion years ago. In the early days of our planet, rain of asteroids bombarded the Earth and turned it into a hellish planet from the pen of a surrealist artist.
The oceans on the planet got so hot they boiled. The heat from the impact of the asteroid vaporized the first oceans on Earth, turning them into vapor that simply disappeared. Huge tracts of the Earth's surface have melted. The giant solid masses that covered the planet turned into a liquid that simply floated around like a slowly moving river in unbearably hot temperatures.
Worse, some rocks have evaporated and become Earth's atmosphere. Magnesium oxide rose into the atmosphere like evaporating water and condensed into droplets of hot liquid magma. Therefore, almost as often as we see rain today, in ancient times, the Earth saw magma falling from heaven.
Giant insects were everywhere
About 300 million years ago, the world was covered in massive lowland swamp forests and the air was filled with oxygen. Then there was 50% more oxygen than today, and there was an incredible explosion of life. Giant insects also appeared, as if from a movie.
For some creatures, all this oxygen in the atmosphere was too much. Small insects could not cope with it, so they became more and more. Some of them have become huge. Scientists have found fossil remains of dragonflies the size of modern gulls and a wingspan of 0.6 meters.
Giant beetles and other insects walked the Earth. But not all of them were friendly. The giant dragonflies, according to scientists, were carnivores.
ILYA KHEL