Mysteries of the planet - Cambrian period

According to official science, life on our planet originated about three billion years ago in the form of the simplest organisms - microscopic isolated rods, filamentous formations, globular and polygonal unicellular algae. These organisms could exist only in water and only in a warm climate.

In general, to our days, there were very few fossil remains from the Precambrian period. Evolution seems to have stalled since the birth of life for three billion years, changing and perfecting only existing species of algae and microscopic organisms.

However, 580 million years ago there was a turning point in the history of evolution - the Cambrian period. Its duration within the life of the Earth is small - 80 million years. It was then that suddenly and almost simultaneously appeared an amazing variety of invertebrate species. More importantly, living organisms in a short time were able to acquire a solid calcareous skeleton.

The multiple biological forms of the Cambrian have become the forerunners of all kinds of modern life, including man. This one-off and sharp appearance of a variety of species is known as the Cambrian explosion.

The land at that time was an absolute desert, all life was concentrated only in the water. The terrestrial continents had a completely different location: for example, in the place of Greenland and North America was the continent of Lavrenty, to the south was the Brazilian mainland. Arabia, Africa and Madagascar represented the single African continent, in the north was the Russian mainland, separated by a deep strait from the Siberian and Chinese continents. In the south was a gigantic Australian continent, which later disintegrated into India, Australia and a number of islands.

In the Cambrian period, some modern mountains were formed: the Northern Appalachian Mountains, the Sayan Range, the Chingiztau Mountains (Kazakhstan).

The life flourished in the water: trilobites, radiolarians, sponges, brachiopods arose and settled. Appeared archeocyats - multicellular animals, which are something in between the coral and the sponge. They massively fastened to the bottom of water bodies, forming a kind of coral reefs. By the end of the Cambrian they had died out.

At that time trilobites were especially thriving - primitive arthropods, similar to modern woodworms. They had a flat disk-shaped body with a chitinous armor, divided into 45-50 segments, and many legs.

Closer to the end of the Cambrian, the first armored vertebrates, prototypes of fish, arose.

So, without any transitional connecting forms and intermediate species, from bacteria and protozoa single-celled suddenly on the Earth formed a lot of invertebrates and vertebral species, prototypes of modern forms. The Cambrian period represents a mysterious evolutionary leap in the history of the Earth.

More often than not, scientists explain this revolutionary event by the critical accumulation of oxygen in the ocean in the air, as well as by the increase in the washout of salts from the land and the increase in the concentration of calcium and magnesium in water. The chemical composition of the water has changed so much that the organisms living there have gained a lot of opportunities for changing and forming species.

It is also assumed that around this time the Earth made a sudden revolution almost 90 degrees, which caused a sharp shift of all continents, tectonic shifts and the formation of a modern relief of the earth's surface. This also affected the formation of new species and adaptations for survival.

Periods of Earth's development met a lot of disasters: thus, almost simultaneously and completely disappeared dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And in the Permian epoch for a short period almost 95% of marine inhabitants died out at a time - it was 245 million years ago.

But among all these mysteries, only the Cambrian period is distinguished by its creativity, and not by the destruction of species. Opponents of the evolutionary approach see in the mystery of the Cambrian explosion confirmation of the divine origin of modern life, including man.