The Only Time In History That Water Was Safer Than Land

there seems to be an unspoken rule in nature where life in the ocean and seas must always be far scarier than life on land this is largely seen today and is also seen throughout history with even the age of dinosaurs having had aquatic nightmares that would have given you more heie GBS than the likes of the T-Rex or dromeosaur for example in fact it's actually quite hard to find a moment in Earth's history where your best chances were in the water rather than on land however there was a short window of time a very long time ago as in before the dinosaurs existed were your chances at survival were actually better in the oceans and seas since nearly everything above water including Mother Nature seemed to be designed for maximum neness this was the linan this name most likely means nothing to you but it represents the last Epoch of the peran period and played out between 259 and this was one of those periods in history where Earth was unrecognizable in nearly every sense including when it came to time itself as during those days the moon had a closer orbit with Earth causing the days to be shorter than they are currently at around 22 hours to add on to the confusion geography was nothing like it is today either since most of Earth's land mass was tied up into the supercontinent Pangia leading to Africa the americaas Antarctica India Australia and parts of Europe all being connected only to the east East could you find decently sized land masses that were free of penia clutches with the largest quote unquote Island consisting of present day Siberia Kazakhstan and North China while to the South you would have swam into another Island composed of South China and various regions of Southeast Asia additionally turkey Iran and Tibet were also Islands at this point being surrounded by the teus ocean on one side and the Paleo teus on the other combined these two bodies of water were undeniably large but there were still nothing compared to the super ocean that lay just west of Pangia panthalassa this prehistoric ocean was unlike anything before it or after it and it occupied well over 60% of the Earth's surface out sizing the current Pacific Ocean by two times just imagining an ocean that is double the size of the Pacific is nerve-wracking and probably meant that you should have avoided it like the plague but despite its Grand size panthalassa and the other oceans for that matter were all actually fairly tame when it came to what was in them there were of course sharks who had evolved 200 million years earlier and if you're something of a perian Enthusiast then you might be picturing the helicoprion an 8 m or 26t long shark that has become something of the poster child for the peran marine megap and possessed one of the strangest and most unsettling mouths of all time that consisted of a cluster of large teeth on the bottom jaw which were arranged into whls yet while this giant shark was indeed from the perian it had already died out by the lenan leaving the oceans rather empty of giant life that being said there were still relatives of this shark swimming about though none that got that big as the biggest hey cidus was only 2 m or 6. 5 ft long similar to the length of a leopard shark so definitely not an immense threat especially since its teeth were designed for soft animals like squids not bony food meanwhile other sharks like the sphenic canids and hibdons while diverse were even smaller typically growing no more than 1 M or 3. 3 ft the uids or c scorpions the group of now extinct arthropods were also present but were not doing so well because while they used to be highly diverse and giant During the devonian period they were now on the brink of Extinction having never fully recovered from the devonian extinction event with only two jera being known from this point and neither were large nor apex predators and for the most part pretty much every Marine Group wasn't doing well partly due to the capitanian mass extinction event that had taken place 2 million years prior it's a relatively obscure event but it was actually more deadly than both the KT Extinction and the Triassic Jurassic Extinction its effects have been bad everywhere yet marine life got the brunt of it and thus during linan you could see some trilobites ammonoids and seapods lurking about but not in any great numbers or size and things would only get worse for marine life but we'll get to that later at this moment the Waters of the lake peran should sound quite boring but this is a key fact to take solison as on land you would have gotten no breaks like in the water the capitanian extinction had brought Devastation to terrestrial life however life on land recovered more swiftly and was actually made arguably more dangerous than before since the extinction took out the old rulers of the Earth the dallans and therefore leaving the door open for new rulers to arise the dinoop fallans was a group that consisted of large bodyi therapsids who were extremely diverse and plentiful throughout most of the early and mid peran yet despite their success they failed to make it to the late perian this absence allowed multiple groups to get ahead but there was one group in particular who benefited the most unfortunately for others and that was the gorgonopsids these prehistoric animals were first discovered by paleontologists all the way back in 1876 and their remains were so horrifying that the researchers decided that the gorgens from Greek mythology were the perfect monsters to name them after while diverse gorgonopsids still generally shared the same characteristics which included deep set teeth parasagittal Gates long narrow skulls and razor sharp elongated incizors and canines making them among the first saber-tooth predators to evolve this presence of saber teeth made them look a bit like saber-tooth cats such as the Smilodon and their bodies were superficially similar too but these killers were neither cat nor feline they weren't even mammals as a matter of fact fact instead they appear to have been therapsids like the dinoop fallans before them who are more closely related to mammals than reptiles but still were not mammals and like the dinoop alans gorgonops had been around during a good chunk of the perian first appearing 265 million years ago during the middle stage in those times these saber-tooth Predators were very small being no larger than a person's foot making them one of the smaller creatures of that time and forcing them to hunt small thops and reptiles however as time passed and each new genus evolved they got bigger and bigger a trend that exploded during the late perian after the eradication of the dinoop alans which ultimately led to the emergence of the largest gorgonopsid of all time in oan Saia this Predator wasn't just the biggest of its kind but also the largest terrestrial Predator from the late peran with exceptional remains suggesting that adults could have been over 11 ft or 3.

5 M long while weighing over 1,000 lb or 453 kilos equ to the size of a large bear though on average individuals are more comparable to tigers in addition to being much larger than most gorgonopsids the inos transavia was also built different as it possessed extremely sturdy long limbs which made it both durable and surprisingly fast allowing it to outpace a myriad of medium to large-bodied herbivores which once caught were in for an absolutely terrible time as the inos transavia possessed elongated post canines and super sized upper canines that were 15 cm or 6 in is long making them among the largest teeth seen in non- mamalian therapsids in addition to being lengthy the weapons were curved and finally serrated allowing them to easily slice through flesh incurring massive blood loss and causing catastrophic damage to vital organs but despite clearly being lethal it's not 100% sure how the indran Savia hunted with the two schools of thought being that it either used tactics similar to what is seen in smilodons I. E taking out the necks hord would do something similar to a bite and run letting a accumulated blood loss and shock take a toll over time regardless neither are fun ways to go so you definitely do not want to run into this apex predator which was also a very hard challenge for Animals back then as inos transavia achieved a widespread range that included now parts of Africa Asia and European Russia this saber-tooth also appears to have been very adaptive as it routinely popped up in a multitude of very different biomes such as warm flood plaines in South Africa or cold air deserts in Russia where relief was only found in the occasional Shallow Lake and thin forests which consisted of pelto perasan the dominant Flora of the late perian it's because it lived in these cold deserts that some paleontologists think that it may have had fur as well yet this idea is still unconfirmed now having one giant gorgonopsid prowling both hemispheres of the Earth would have been bad enough but the late peran was home to many more than just the inos transavia with dozens of other species of gorgonopsids being known of many of which lived in the European part of Russia as well in including the smaller pros slav levia and the mediumsized suo Gorgon resulting in gorgonopsids having complete dominance over many ecosystems where herbivores no matter their size had a gorgonopsid as their main predator and also making peran Russia one of the last places you'd want to visit although it was actually much worse down in South Africa where a whole subf family of giant gorgonopsids had independently evolved alongside the inos transavia and they were the rubig while the inos transavia was the largest single gorgonopsid of all time the rubig were on average the largest family and were distinguished by robust skulls the lack of a parasphenoid bone frequent tooth replacement and the possession of deeply serrated teeth that were likely even better for cutting than those the inran Savia they were fairly stocky too with some coming very close in size to the inran Saia as demonstrated by rubidia atrox a species of gorgonopsid who resided within what is today South Africa and Tanzania where it sometimes grew to be 10 feet or 3 m long this body size alone made it an apex predator but what was really impressive and menacing was its skull as it took up over 15% of an individual's total body length and not to mention that recovered skulls were also extremely thick and had signs of skull bossing which are bony protuberances that indicate that this Predator was made to bite and grapple with powerful large prey yet coincidentally like the smileton 250 million years after it the ridia did not have a very strong bite with reconstructions indicating a bite force of around 715 Newtons only 20% more powerful than the bite of a wolf which really just shows how well-designed its teeth were for piercing effortlessly through flesh and tough hide like the in transavia the rubidia would have been able to alter entire ecosystems by its Lonesome yet sadly for all it was almost never alone as indirect evidence suggests that it routinely coexisted with other members of its subam it consisted of nine Genera all ranging in size from medium to large if this wasn't bad enough it's now thought that it coexisted within o transavia too since both had a presence in late per and South Africa given their similar size and fairly similar builds the two most likely shared the same predatorial Niche likely leading to frequent conflict and that all goes to say that this truly was the planet of the gorgonopsids and their dominating presence on land made water a definite safer choice but just to really prove the point I should also mention that the late peran was home to many other Predators too that were nightmarish within their own right with the most notable examples being the Theos sealians in an emerging Trend this Cade was once again thops and originated during the middle perian although unlike the gorgonopsids they had not achieved such large sizes in this time although they were equally widespread and actually more diverse with species being found across Russia Antarctica Africa and China a small handful were even herbivores but the vast majority were predators who actually could have been confused for gorgonopsids to the untrained eye as They too had relatively large skulls and similar body plants but there were key differences with theosyion tending to have broader deep skulls smaller straight teeth shorter bodies and more compacted builds and as mentioned they were more diverse resulting in many developing hunting techniques not seen in gorgonopsids and there were even a chance that a couple namely the dog-sized Ichi bops and yuk kersia were venomous which if accurate would make them the first tetrapods to have evolved Venom you also had ones that are often interpreted as being semi-aquatic creatures like the iido suids While others were fully terrestrial hunting large animals using unusual saber teeth as showcased by the sky laac of Swords but of all the Theos fallans the one who stood out the most was the moscar rinus a Jaguar sized Predator with a lion sized head that was equipped with numerous very sharp conical teeth it disproportionately large head suggested a fairly strong bite and paleontologists think that it hunted prey by pinning them down with its powerful forelimbs before dealing out damage with its razor sharp teeth and powerful jaws and to further its Legacy fossil records show the moscar rinus was among the most abundant Theos falion during the late peran and one of the only non- gorgonopsids to have achieved apex predator status perhaps even replacing gorgonopsids in certain environments but interestingly enough while not as successful as moscar rinus there were bigger Theos alans including the mega whia a 3M or 9t long distant relative of the moscar rinus who prowed European Russia during the first half of the linjian to date it is the largest known thefallen and based on copper lights AKA fossilized feces we know that it likely fed upon large diodon which it might have killed by using Venom specifically some studies on its SK seems to suggest that in life it had a Venom gland and possibly multiple Venom ducts that would have delivered fatal amounts into prey while biting them however because remains from its prey tend to be in poor condition this claim is not fully accepted by the paleontology Community by this point the lay peran should come across as a hectic place with thalians and gorgonopsids running about but even they were not the entire Iceberg since there were still a bunch of other carnivores all very distinct and unusual in appearance for starters you had the superficially Croc likee protos suids who are slender but could still be rather large and were equipped with giant needle-like teeth unlike the previously mentioned carnivores this group were reptiles and were either terrestrial or semi-aquatic Hunters who were found on every continent besides Antarctica and North America then there was the Cronos sukia who were again superficially cck-like but had extensive armor along their backs as well perhaps to help protect against attacks from large therapsids members of this group could be quite different and were sometimes fully terrestrial and other times semi-aquatic and while there were usually no larger than a monitor lizard some Genera like the Ural Erton could get quite sizable specifically in European Russia where specimens grew to be the same size as female American alligators amphibians or rather primitive amphibians were also present and thriving on Pangia and we're honestly the biggest reason why an animal should be wey around fresh water as many evolved to be specialized Ambush Hunters that opportunistically fed on anything they could catch in the water or anything that ventured too close to the water's edge of the numerous families that existed arguably the most lethal to humanized prey were the Ryan suced a family of tetrapods from which living amphibians likely descended from each species had four limbs a fairly long tail and body shapes akin to that of giant salamanders or crocodilians the largest member you could find in a body of fresh water was the uran Centon a 13t or 4 M Behemoth that resided in South Africa along with our friends the gorgonopsids and thalians talk about a bad place to live and then in European Russia that also had its fair share of terrestrial Hunters there were the arago Sor to make up for the missing Aran Centon this was yet another tetrapodal family but they were more slender and narrow than the ryin suids but could still get pretty big with certain Genera like the melosa reaching 10 ft or 3 m from head to tail with so much going on it's hard to believe that herbivores even managed to survive but they sure did and across large SES of penia you would have stumbled into an array of D codons codons capto rids and Par reptiles compared to the carnivores herbivores were actually more diverse and had developed many tools to survive one of the more famous herbivores was the listra sorus a badger to Pig sized diodon that was one of the most abundant animals around it had a rather odd build but it was not to be underestimated as it sported powerful for liims and tusks that it may have used to dig deep Burrows that granted much needed protection and interestingly enough the art of digging seems to have been relatively common as totally separate groups like The cyop phids also learned to burrow using their broad skulls to displace large amounts of dirt then on the opposite side of the spectrum you had the parasaurs that took a different route and became armored tanks kind of similar to an kyos minus the club tailes specifically species in this CA often had large bony scoots that were set into their skin and had highly aifi dense heavy bones that provided additional protection they were also among the largest if not the largest late perian animals to have lived with the most famous member scutosaurus having weighed over 1. 2 tons and being similar in length to large gorgonopsids at this weight and given its frame scutosaurus was a slow-moving animal that relied on its armor to survive and in its case its defensive capabilities were further boosted by spikes that adorned its skull and muscles that were so dense that they were basically impenetrable this specific genus was only found within European Russia but as a family the parasaurs had a global distribution additional herbivorous groups worth mentioning include the kingor idop bent Talia and dein day as wild as the L perian was it did have one silver lining which was that you didn't really have to worry about looking up unlike the Mesozoic which was home to Giant parasaurs capable of eating literal Dinosaurs the peran did not really have any dangerous Giants patrolling the sky there were the Griffin flies and paleo dict diopter which could have given you quite the scare but they were harmless to large animals and weren't very abundant nor diverse thanks to the Carboniferous rainforest collapse of all the things flying around the largest animals were probably the velto sord a family of gliding reptiles that grew no larger than a big bat and while having one in your hair would suck these guys were only dangerous to insects and spent most of their Days On Solid ground or rather in the trees as their morphology was highly developed for a boreal movement to make up though for the lackluster Skies the late peran had one more trick up its sleeve so to speak and that was Mother Nature itself if you've been following along you may have noticed that life seemed to be mostly concentrated in a handful of places mainly European Russia and Africa this was because large chunks of land were borderline uninhabitable with estimates suggesting an average temperature of 35 C or 95° F making it twice as hot as the present this oppressive heat contributed to severe aridity that plagued the supercontinent and resulted in absolutely massive deserts near the equator where life was fairly devoid to make matters worse to the north you had the central penan mountains an extensive mountain range that span across the entire horizontal length of the continent and creating areas that were prone to severe droughts to put this into perspective if such conditions popped up in the present life would take a serious downturn and the crazy part is is that this nightmarish climate was rather tame for the late perian because if you stick around long enough until approximately 252 million years ago you would have witnessed the Earth turned into an apocalyptic Wasteland thanks to the late perian Extinction otherwise known as the great dying which is a fitting name G considering was Earth's worst Extinction event of all time it is commonly believed that this doomday event started from the eruption of the Siberian traps or rather was caused by the eruptions that created the Siberian traps a large region of volcanic rock in Siberia that's about the same size as Western Europe these eruptions are unlike anything ever seen by humanity and decimated the entire planet causing lava flows a kilometer or 0.