Why did the Earth Before the Dinosaurs Look So Terrible?

did you know that you're most likely an alien on this planet some scientists believe that the seeds of life may have been planted here by an asteroid or a comet carrying the building blocks of life across the vast expanse of space this tantalizing idea raises the possibility that life on Earth might not be entirely Earthly at all perhaps in a way we are all [Music] aliens but whether life began here or was delivered from the Stars every living thing on our planet shares a remarkable connection hidden deep within our cells is the evidence of a

single ancestor an organism that lived billions of years ago and gave rise to all forms of life on Earth could we really be aliens and what bizarre creatures came after the first life on Earth appeared imagine being able to see the Earth around 4 and A2 billion years ago as a fiery molten rock being constantly bombarded by asteroids and comets the early Earth was an extremely hostile place but from all this chaos something seemingly rare and extraordinary was about to happen life was about to [Music] begin scientists believe that life got its start on Earth

around 3.5 to 4.5 billion years ago the earth was in a period called the hadan era aptly named because the planet was full of active volcanoes and the atmosphere was toxic it would be hard to imagine any living thing being able to survive here the early solar system itself was a chaotic and unforgiving place space rocks of all different sizes left over from the formation of the sun came together to form a disc around the star gravity pulled these chunks of rocks together which sometimes ended in destruction or they came together to create larger objects

like the planets and moons in our solar system our own moon was formed the same [Music] way during the hadan era Earth was still a molten turbulent World constantly bombarded by space debris but then the most significant Collision in Earth's history occurred a mars-sized protoplanet named Thea crashed into the young Earth with an unimaginable Force the impact was so powerful that it sent vast amounts of Earth's mantle and crust into space forming a ring of debris around the planet over time the debris Cloud rich in Earth's materials formed a moon rock samples collected during the

Apollo missions proved that the moon was made of the same materials as Earth and split lunar Boulders were evidence of huge collisions but this cataclysmic event didn't just create the Moon it also altered the Earth in a few important ways the Collision tilted Earth's axis resulting in different weather Seasons its gravitational pull began to stabilize Earth's rotation preventing wild orbital swings which would have made the planet much less hospitable for Life the moon also started to influence the the tides creating a rhythmic e and flow in the oceans which may have played a crucial role

in the development of early life all this activity during the time of the young Earth set the stage for the first Spark of Life large asteroid impacts likely made the atmosphere rich with carbon monoxide which may have fueled early biological metabolism and played a key role in the origin of life now not only did asteroid and Comet impacts create an atmosphere but they brought with them complex organic molecules the pant peria hypothesis is the idea that life on Earth or the basic building blocks of life may have originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life

that came from outer space maybe even beyond our solar system and was delivered by asteroids comets meteorites or came from cosmic dust if it's true then we could all call ourselves alien From Another World while that sounds like science fiction we now know this is a possibility evidence of asteroids carrying around the building blocks of life came from NASA's Osiris Rex Mission they wanted to grab a sample from a huge asteroid floating in space named benu when scientists studied the rocks and dust from The Returned sample they found it abundant in water rich in carbon

nitrogen and all the organic compounds that are essential components for Life as We Know It although not the very first form of life the last Universal common ancestor or Luca for short is estimated to have lived around 4.2 billion years ago just a few hundred million years after the Earth formed this means Luca existed at a time when Earth was still a very hos style place with extreme volcanic activity and a toxic atmosphere Luca was probably a single celled organism similar to Modern bacteria or archia despite being simple it had some complex molecular Machinery including

the ability to replicate its DNA and produce proteins Luca used the same genetic code that all living organisms use today this code is like a language that cells use to read DNA and build proteins and is been preserved through billions of years of evolution all living things on Earth are connected to this last Universal common ancestor from the tiniest bacteria the largest blue whales and yes even [Music] humans Earth's harsh early conditions didn't matter to this organism scientists believe Luca lived in extreme environments possibly near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor where super heated water

rich in minerals could have provided the energy and nutrients necessary for Life the hydrent deep in the seas and oceans is where chemical Evolution occurred imagine a primordial soup a mixture of water gases and minerals all swirling together in the ancient [Music] oceans lightning strikes volcanic eruptions and ultraviolet radiation from The Young Sun provided the energy needed to Kickstart chemical reactions some chemical reactions that spark life took place in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor these vents spew hot mineral-rich water providing a perfect environment for chemical reactions hydrothermal vents are like underwater volcanoes the hot

water they release contains chemicals like hydrogen sulfide which microbes can use for energy this process is known as chemosynthesis and it could have been a a crucial step in the development of early life life could also have begun in Shallow sunlet ponds or tidal pools here the constant wetting and drying Cycles could have concentrated organic molecules driving the chemical reactions needed to form life imagine a small pond that dries up in the sun leaving behind a thick gooey mixture of organic molecules when it rains the pond fills up again and new reactions take place over

time these Cycles could have led to the formation of life so what were these first life forms like they were incredibly simple nothing more than tiny single celled organisms these ancient microbes known as procaryotes lacked a nucleus and other complex structures found in modern cells they thrived in the harsh conditions of early Earth using chemical reactions to produce energy and grow procaryotes are like microscopic survival machines they can live in extreme environments from boiling hot springs to the cold deep underground these early life forms were incredibly resilient and their simple structure allowed them to adapt

and evolve over [Music] time straty literally means layered rock and a the structures created by the growth of cyanobacteria also known as blue green algae stromatolites are called Earth's oldest living life forms these microorganisms form colonies and trap sediment with their sticky filaments creating layered Mound likee formations CYO bacteria within stromatolites performed photosynthesis converting sunlight into energy and releasing oxygen as a byproduct this process was crucial in transforming Earth's atmosphere and making it habitable for more complex life [Music] forms Aria are single celled microorganisms that are known for their ability to thrive in extreme environments

such as hot springs salty lakes and deep sea hydrothermal vents some can survive in temperatures above the boiling point of water while others can live in a highly acidic or alkaline conditions their ability to adapt to extreme environments suggests that they might have been among the first life forms to colonize the early Earth these procaryotes dominated the early Earth but a significant leap in complexity came with the emergence of UK carots about 1.5 billion years ago eukaryotic cells are more complex than procar iotic cells with a nucleus that houses genetic material and specialized organel that

perform various functions the origin of ukar Nots is linked to a process called endosymbiosis which happens when a larger procaryotic cell engulfs smaller procaryotic cells and then become symbiotic Partners over time these engulfed cells evolve into organel like mitochondria and chloroplasts mitochondria often referred to as the powerhouses of the cell produce energy through cellular respiration chloroplasts found in plants and algae enable photosynthesis this endosymbiotic theory is supported by the fact that mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own DNA which is similar to the DNA of certain bacteria around 1.6 billion years ago the first multicellular organisms

began to appear one of the earliest known examples is gania a genus of algae that lived in Shallow Seas grania was a simple ribbonlike organism but its appearance marked a significant step in the evolution of Life multicellularity allowed organisms to grow larger and develop specialized cells for different functions this increased complexity paved the way for the diverse array of of life forms that would follow acars are another group of early life forms that appeared around 1.5 billion years ago these microscopic single celled organisms are thought to be among the earliest ukots acars had a tough

outer shell which likely provided protection and helped them survive in harsh environments fossil evidence of acars comes from ancient rock formations around the world World these fossils show a wide variety of shapes and sizes indicating that acars were a diverse group around 1.2 billion years ago red algae or rodopa emerged as some of the earliest photosynthetic ukar outs red algae are still around today and are commonly found in Marine environments red algae have a unique pigment called psycho arine which gives them their red color and allows them to absorb light efficiently for photosynthesis this adaption

enabled red algae to thrive in deeper waters where light is limited fast forward to about 635 million years ago and we enter the Ed aarin period this period is characterized by the appearance of a group of early multicellular organisms that lived in Marine environments the edaran biota included a variety of strange and fascinating life forms some of which have no modern counterparts one very important example is this flat round creature with segments named dickinsonia which lived around 558 million years ago on the ancient seabeds it was well adapted to life on the sea floor where

it fed by absorbing nutrients from the microbial mats it lived on and GRE GRE up to 4 and 1/2 ft long it's the oldest known animal on earth it existed long before the Cambrian explosion when most major animals started to appear the new Earth was a hellish place during this time the flow of the mantle beneath the crust caused the movement of large plates of rock on the planet's surface collisions of these plates created huge mountains and volcanoes that continually erupted shoot out huge amounts of lava and gases and the reefs were created in the

oceans at this time the protoplanet barely had an atmosphere but as the planet cooled gravity captured those gases from the volcanoes water was deposited on Earth by collisions of many comets and asteroids one other key thing for life to emerge on our planet aside from water is where it lies from its star the sun earth sits in what's called The goldilock Zone which puts it it close enough to the Sun to allow liquid water to exist on the Earth's surface before life even began or had a chance on Earth radiation from our Star was the

primary source of energy on our planet just as it is today the early Earth had very little oxygen if any at all and it's theorized that solar energy provided the jump start that transformed simple organic molecules into more complex ones transforming them into the building blocks of biology and life life likely developed in undersea alkaline Vents and was probably based on ribonucleic acid a nucleic acid which is present in all living cells rather than deoxy ribonucleic acid an organic chemical containing genetic information and instructions for protein synthesis at some point during this time a common

ancestor gave rise to two main groups of Life bacteria and ARA although exactly how this happened is still uncertain for billions of years tiny microbes and single celled organisms evolved and began feeding on methane around 3.6 billion years ago and at the 3 billion year mark evidence of viruses were found however some argue that viruses could be as old as life itself sometime during Earth's early history the planet took a turn towards habitability when a group of microbes known as cyanobacteria evolved with the ability to turn light and water into energy and released oxygen in

the process dissolved oxygen caused ion in the oceans to rust and sink to the sea floor which formed striking red banded ion formations but between 2.4 and 2.1 billion years ago something incredibly remarkable and disastrous took place in this early cycle of Life the poisonous waste produced by these evolved photosynthetic CYO bacteria oxygen built up in the atmosphere causing anerobic bacteria to off leading to the Earth's first mass extinction which some call the great oxidation event how can oxygen be toxic you might be asking oxygen became toxic because of the high levels and overwhelmed the

natural antioxidant defense system of any living microbe or bacteria at the time basically these cyanobacteria in the form of algae ate themselves to death and caused a global Extinction but the worst was about to come around 2.3 billion years ago the earth froze over as the possible result of the great oxidation event and volcanic activity on the planet slowed down over time the ice melted which resulted in more oxygen being indirectly released into the atmosphere this gave way to the neopro era where protones such as parium amibas and melanos serum evolved the first animal cells

were different from plants and these cells began feeding feeding on plants and became the first herbivores but during this era the Earth froze again at least two more times which stunted evolutionary development however life finds a way and during this time fungi worms and other small bilaterally symmetrical animals survived and evolved fast forward to the Paleozoic Era complex life forms began to develop including fish arthropods mollusks and echinoderms plants started to show up on the surface of the Earth and air breathing animals started to walk crawl and Slither on land meanwhile sharks horseshoe crabs and

Starfish began to fill the oceans at the beginning of the devonian period insects started to take form and ferns were the common land plant a prehistoric jawless fish with bony armor called the seaspice and crabs large sharks hagfish and ratfish evolved this gave way to the Carboniferous period where the climate on Earth was thought to be tropical with little change during the seasons and gave rise to a new wave of strange creatures plants covered the Earth during this time and the organic deposits of plant debris formed the world's first coal deposits which humans are still

burning today the growth of these forests increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere which Peak to around 35% compared to the 21% it is is today this alone might explain the size of the giant creepy crawlies that emerged some animals and insects may have developed in water and grew bigger as a way to protect themselves against the high levels of oxygen at the time one of those were giant insects called meganeuropsis which closely resemble modern-day dragonflies had wingspans of 63 to 68 cm and could be seen in the skies during this period one incredibly detailed fossil

of a huge dragonfly that died 320 million years ago was discovered to have a wingspan of 0.75 m deadly poisonous centipedes 2 m long crawled around with Mammoth cockroaches and scorpions as big as 1 M long amphibians began to diversify and reptiles evolved into forms much like modern-day lizards with a backbone allowing them to live and move on land these amphibians were also huge and some species were predatory resembling modern-day crocodiles armed with sharp teeth and reaching lengths of almost 6 M long and like modern day crocodiles and alligators some evolved to have a thicker

scaly skin which solved the problem of their bodies drying out if they were out of the water too long and for the first time amphibians evolved to lay amniotic or air breathing eggs on land and that changed everything since these animals could now live out out of and away from water sources for those who like to swim or scuba dive you'll be glad that duno stas is now extinct the sheer size of this huge carnivore would be enough to scare you alone it grew almost 9 M long and weighed close to 4,000 kg full grown

dunas was an armored fish an apex predator that was capable of taking down just about anything it could get in its jaws the interesting thing about the heavily armored tank-like dunas is that it was toothless instead of teeth its armored head and jaw plates formed massive self-sharpening blades that could rip and tear through anything and with a bite force of £ 21,000 per square in that's on par with giant crocodiles this scary creature of the depths could Chomp straight through bone furthermore the jaws of the Dunkleosteus could rapidly open and close very fast creating a

suction action that would suck prey right into their jaws and this fish didn't care what God its way because everything was lunch there's even fossil evidence showing they tried to eat each other it would be no problem for a fish this size to quickly make a meal of a human lucky for us the Dunkleosteus went extinct along with 75% of the planet species from a combination of 8 to 10 Extinction events over 20 million years called the late devonian Extinction the Carboniferous period gave way to the perian period that began approximately 300 million years ago

just 50 million years before the dinosaurs all the continents during this period existed as one large land mass called Pangia the first large Plante eating and meat eating animals evolved during this time some of these creatures could be mistaken for dinosaurs but they were actually more closely related to mammals and reptiles one of these bizarre creatures was Diplo serpis it looked a little like a salamander that averaged around 1 M long but its head was shaped like a boomerang another new reptile on the planet was the iconic dimetrodon which grew to about 5 m long

and had a large Sail on its back which is likely used to regulate its body temperature during the peran period mammals were increasing in dominance the biggest of these were creatures classified as gorgonopsians which were a class of giant bear-like animals that all had different teeth that were specialized for different functions these animals could be either herbivores or Carnival and vary in size from less than a kilog to more than a ton one group of these creatures were known as codons their name means doglike teeth and these animals had social behavior and there is some

fossil evidence that shows they hunted in pack in the oceans fish with true bony skeletons evolved sharks and Rays flourished as well as sponges and coral on land insects evolved with adapted mouth parts that allowed them to pierce and suck but around 252 million years ago the peran era came to an abrupt End by a cataclysmic event that caused mass extinction in 2001 scientists made a chilling Discovery a massive Comet or asteroid similar to the one that put an end to the dinosaurs wiped out the giant reptile predecessors 200 million years earlier but how did

scientists come to this conclusion molecules of helium and Argon gas were found locked in carbon in high proportions that could have only come from space it's estimated that the asteroid or Comet was between 6 and 12 km wide in diameter researchers say the strike would have released the energy 1 million times greater than the biggest earthquake of the last century aside from this discovery there's some evidence that current day Siberia and China experienced volcanic eruptions on an unimaginably massive scale and those eruptions created dust and ash cloud that blocked out sunlight not only that but

over 1 million years 3 million cubic km of lava poured out of the ground covering the entire planet in a layer 10 m thick the asteroid impact combined with volcanic activity was the proverbial Blast from a double barreled shotgun the Earth was once again a very unhappy place the combination of these two events resulted in What's called the Great dying 90% of all marine animals animal and 70% of all land animals that were alive during this time perished it would seem like this would be the final chapter in the evolution of life on Earth and

it would be seemingly wiped out completely but a new age would begin after this and the age of the dinosaurs would begin the extinction event of the peran Triassic era 252 million years ago marked the beginning of the Mesozoic Era of the Triassic Jurassic and Cretaceous Period which lasted 186 million years during the Triassic era there was one vast supercontinent called Pangia which was mostly vast deserts with a hot and dry climate surrounded by a huge ocean called panasa Dinosaurs would begin to evolve during the mid to late Triassic period when we talk about dinosaurs

we immediately imagine towering and thundering animals like Tyrannosaurus Rex but new research shows that the dinosaurs and their terrasaur relatives evolved from extremely small ancestors proof of this theory was discovered in Madagascar when a newly discovered reptile species was found named konon Kelly or tiny bug Slayer it lived some 237 million years ago and stood just 10 cm tall it's one of the first small animals found from the root of the orod family tree and is an important discovery the miniaturization event in which it lived served as a survival strategy for early orans and where

on its teeth showed the tiny creature prayed on insects this eliminated the need for them to compete with their relatives for meat furthermore researches of this tiny dinosaur relative showed that feathers and other fuzzy skin coverings found on the later true dinosaurs and parasaurs likely originated to protect the tiny Dino ancestors from the extreme climate of the toate Triassic period when the first dinosaurs evolved the Triassic marked the rise of the reptiles mainly the archosaurs or ruling lizards and therapsids or mammal-like reptiles for reasons unknown the archosaurs had an evolutionary Edge musling out their Mike

cousins and evolving by the mid to late Triassic into the first true dinosaurs such as Eoraptor and herrerasaurus dinosaurs were divided into two main branches sisan which means lizard hipped and onisan or bird hipped dinosaurs Eoraptor was at the root of the sisan family tree it was only 91 cm long and weighed about 11 kg it had long legs that allowed it to run fast and its front paes had sharp claws that helped it to grab prey herrerasaurus was more advanced in evolution than the Eoraptor because it had a joint in its lower jaw it

had a large skull and its jaws were armed with the sharp teeth of a carnivore it averaged in length from 3 to 6 M and had five fingers on each paw with blunt claws stosa surus was another early true dinosaur that was about 2 m long with a large skull as long as its femur and there were 13 to 14 sharp teeth in its upper and lower Jaws it has short front paws with five fingers it had long hind legs that allowed it to run fast stosa was a predator that weighed about 30 kg and

although this dinosaur was kind of small it probably had no trouble dealing with larger prey aapor herrerasaurus and stosa orus are prime examples of the rapid evolution of predatory dinosaurs 225 million years ago but at the same time the first Plante eating dinosaurs appeared in the fossil record pisanosaurus was a 1 M dinosaur that weighed 2 to9 kg and had closely spaced teeth forming a continuous Edge for grinding plant matter by the late Triassic period there were at least 15 different dinosaurs during the Jurassic period earth's climate changed from hot and dry to a much

more humid and subtropical climate forests of ferns pads and conifers began to cover the planet and the air was warm moist with tropical breezes during the beginning of this period the breakup of the supercontinent Pangia continued and accelerated laurasia the northern half of the continent broke up into North America and Eurasia the southern half called gondwana began to break up during the mid Jurassic the Eastern Parts Antarctica Madagascar India and Australia split off from the Western half of Africa and South America new oceans flooded the spaces in between huge mountains rose on the sea Flor

and pushed sea levels higher onto the continents it was all this water that created the humid and subtropical climate deserts began to turn green palm tree like pads and Conifer trees such as the Aral caria and pine were abundant the oceans became full of diverse and Abundant Life and at the top of the ocean food chain were the marine reptiles the plesiosaurs with their long necks and paddle finin flippers among them were giant Marine crocodiles sharks and Rays iosaur squid-like seapods coil shelled ammonites sponges snails and mollusks were abundant in the ancient oceans coral reefs

grew and expanded quickly in the warm Waters and microscopic Plankton increased rapidly to the point that they may have turned parts of the ocean red the earliest known bird Arch opter took to the skies in the lake Jurassic likely evolved from an early celosaur and dinosaur archaeopteris had to compete for airspace with terrasaurs flying reptiles that had been buzzing the sky since the late Triassic meanwhile insects such as Leaf Hoppers and beetles were abundant as many of Earth's earliest mammals scurried around the feet of dinosaurs it was at this time that the dinosaurs began making

their Mark in a huge way literally small quadrupedal Plante eating dinosaurs gradually evolved into multi-ton Giants the Plante eating sorod named Brachiosaurus was 16 M tall and stretched out to around 26 M long and could weigh as much as 25 tons another herbivorous sort giant named Diplodocus was 27 M long and weighed between 30 to 50 tons the sheer size of these dinosaur Giants may have stopped the attacks of a bulky meat eating dinosaur that walked on two powerful legs who also lived during this time the ominous Allosaurus this huge carnivore ranged in size from

7 to 12 M long weighed nearly 2 tons and had 16 sharp teeth in its upper and lower jaw and like many predatory dinosaurs of the mooic era Allosaurus constantly grew shed and replaced its three to 4in teeth and this dinosaur was fast models suggest that Allosaurus could run run up to 34 kmph fossil evidence shows that Allosaurus prayed on stegosaurus and the Plante eating dinosaur fought back punching holes right through Allosaurus his bones with its spiky clubbed tail it could be why stegosaurus had a pretty long run and survived all the way up to

the lake Cretaceous but there were new predators that would come along that were as equally terrifying as the Allosaurus the North American Tyrannosaurus Rex could grow 12.5 M long and weighed up to 8 to 10 tons although now some say it might have weighed half of these estimates but the T-Rex wasn't alone in the meate eating dinosaur category in fact it was either outclass or equal to two other sharp toothed Monsters the South American gigantosaurus which had the same type of build and weighed 9 tons and the 10 ton Northern African Spinosaurus still the T-Rex

was a mean and nasty Predator if not downright unhygienic experts believe that shards of rotten bacteria Laden meat was constantly lodged in its closely packed teeth which gave the animal a septic bite that would eventually be fatal to its wounded prey of course this process would have taken at least several days or weeks and another T-Rex would probably reap the rewards scientists examining the T-rex skull determined it had the bite force of between 1550 00 to 5,000 lb per square in and could take bites of Flesh in the 225 kg range but Tyrannosaurus Rex like

Allosaurus had problems with prey itself it lived in the same region and time period as some armored Plante eating dinosaurs one of the most iconic dinosaurs next to T-Rex has to be Triceratops which means three horned face all Triceratops had three horned skulls two massive horns were above the eye socket and one smaller horn was over the nose weighing around 6.5 to 13 tons the biggest Triceratops was 9 M long from nose to tail the tips of their shoulders were 3 m off the ground Triceratops had teeth arranged in Dental batteries and each individual tooth

was stacked in a vertical column of 3 to 5 teeth these formed rows with 36 to 40 tooth loaded columns this means that a single Triceratops could have 800 teeth at its disposal it had a narrow beak and powerful jaws that allowed it to grind down tough vegetation and trees it's one of the last non-avian dinosaurs to evolve at the end of the Cretaceous anosa surus is another of the most famous armored dinosaurs it was the largest ankos sorid and the last of its kind it's thought to have lived right up to the end of

the cretti period the body of anosa was covered in bony plates it had a beak and teeth and four horns that projected backwards from its head its tail ended in a club which provided protection from predators this would have been useful since anosa lived alongside Tyrannosaurus Rex and other meat eating Predators at some point during the middle of the Cretaceous Period dinosaurs from the orthopod family evolved into the popular hadrosaur or duck build dinosaurs they were large oddly shaped low-slung vegetation eaters with tough beaks on their snouts which were used for shredding vegetation these dinosaurs

are believed to have lived in herds and were capable of walking on two legs Sora pods became even bigger by the late Cretaceous Period you may have thought that brachiosaurus and Diplodocus were big but by the time the late Cretaceous Period rolled around there was another dinosaur that existed which could possibly be the biggest land animal that ever walked the Earth Argentinosaurus this Behemoth could be 30 to 40 m in length and weighed between 50 and 100 tons it was a member of the titanosaur the dominant group during the Cretaceous Period and was a herbivore

like its earlier sorod cousins there was also a strange new breed of dinosaur that lived 20 million years before they all went extinct they were called pilosa orus or bone headed dinosaurs and have a bizarr looking skull with horns on the snout and around the base of the skull these could have been used to fight off the last of the big predators or even to show dominance over their own species of course there were more than 700 different dinosaurs that have been found so far but not enough time to cover them all in one video

there are some dinosaurs that lived in the colder regions when they were further south and within the Antarctic Circle during the Cretaceous during this time there could have been some snow and ice and temperatures as low as - 10° C during The 3mon Long Dark Winters there were a variety of different dinosaurs living in this polar zone in 2014 a skull section and upper and lower jawbones were found of a miniature T-Rex called nanosaurus hogland it's believed that many dinosaurs had feathers to protect them from the elements and this tiny T-Rex cousin was about 6

M long it's now believed that all species of Tyrannosaurus Rex had feathers to protect them from the elements and nanosaurus was no different other dinosaurs like the horned and duck build dinosaurs along with other small feathery Predators parrot-like over Raptors and a small herbivore named Lela noora lived in the polar region as well but their time would soon come to an end everyone talks about how dramatically the dinosaurs went extinct but judging by the whopping 165 million years they survived they might just be the most successful vertebrate animals to ever exist on Planet Earth in

fact some dinosaur relatives are still around on the planet today modern-day birds are in fact descendants of feathered dinosaurs and you might be surprised to learn that crocodiles are the closest living relatives to birds as they shared a common ancestor the two groups are the only known survivors of the arkosaurus we all know what happened happed to the dinosaurs and if you missed our video on the day the dinosaurs went extinct we'll put a link in the description for you the giant asteroids impact into shallow Waters in the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago

was bad enough but then an amalgam of additional disasters ensued rocks fell from the sky wildfires ignited and tsunamis inundated distant shorelines the researchers found that the first day of the scoic was peppered with cataclysms and released a new record of this day of Chaos in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences their timeline was developed using high resolution photography microscopy computed tomography Imaging and magnetic measurements of hundreds of feet of sedimentary rock recently recovered from chickaloo one of the largest impact crators on Earth and it All Began like this imagine you were somewhere in

North America about 65 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and you were looking up at the night sky you would have probably seen what appeared to be a bright star shining off into the distance but if you watch this peculiar light for an hour or two the object would seem to grow in brightness but barely move what you would be looking at is not a star but a huge asteroid somewhere between 11 to 80 km wide on a direct intercept course with the Earth at 72,2 kmph hours later the asteroid plows through Earth's

atmosphere heading straight for where the Yucatan Peninsula is today at impacts of that speed Earth's atmosphere acts like water smaller space rocks called meteors hit the atmosphere like pebbles thrown into a pond and decelerate rapidly at high altitudes burning away from the friction of the atmosphere while some bigger pieces of rocks survive and fall to Earth but the mountain siiz chickaloo asteroid hits our atmosphere like throwing a boulder into a puddle it's maintained its velocity and plunged through the entire 60 Mi of atmosphere in just 3 seconds the asteroid shrieks over Central America emitting the

mother of all Sonic Booms that would shatter eardrums across all the continent the dinosaurs were likely terrified and running in all directions having no idea what was just about to happen but if any animal was close enough to see the asteroid they would have been instantly vaporized within minutes in fact except for sea turtles and crocodile no four-legged animal larger than 25 kg would survive the mountain sized Space Rock Falls so quickly that the air itself cannot Escape Under intense compression the air Heats to thousands of degrees almost instantly before the asteroid even hits compressed

superheated air vaporizes much of the shallow sea that covers the Yucatan Mill seconds later the rock plunges through what's left and slams into bedrock in that moment a chain reaction of events occurs the impacting asteroid exerts so much pressure on the earth that soil and rock flow like fluids the flowing up and down movement of the earth is like the double splash of someone doing a cannonball in a swimming pool the initial Splash in all directions is followed by a delayed vertical Splash when the cavity created by the asteroid rebounds to the surface the First

wall of Earth gouged outward at the moment of impact is more than 32 km High the impact hole nearly breaches Earth's mantle and when the cavity rebounds to form the delayed vertical splash the Earth Rises at over 1,600 kmph to Heights taller than Mount Everest within minutes this mountain of debris almost entirely collapses in a series of secondary explosions leaving behind a smaller Mound called a crater's peak ring at the same moment the asteroid strikes the Yucatan and applies its pressure to the Bedrock it converts the kinetic energy of a 7.5 billion ton Rock traveling

16 km/ second into searing heat in an instant the chickalo impactor delivers approximately 1 septian 300 sextilion K of energy more energy than 1 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs the kinetic energy transferred by the asteroid to the soil Rock and air excites the molecules to temperatures far hot than the surface of the Sun the heat rips electrons from atoms ionizing the air into an expanding Fireball of plasma in excess of 10,000 de turbocharged with vaporized rock that blasted out at Hypersonic speeds the heated rapidly expanding air and near instantaneous conversion of Earth to gas combined with

the impact shock wave itself forms a massive blast wave of pressure expanding outward at more than 1,600 km per hour if this asteroid hit the same spot today the blast wave would vaporize you in Texas deafen you in New York and blow out glass windows in bu aseries the chickaloo impactor Rings earth like a bell waves in Earth's crust radiate away from the Impact Zone at 4 km/s the waves then trigger fault slipping earthquakes across the continent if you on the other side of the world you'd feel the ground shaking 30 minutes after impact the

impact triggers tsunamis as high as skyscrapers the first of them hit Gulf coastlines within the hour waves ranging from 600 ft to perhaps as tall as 1,000 ft smash into what is now Mexico and the Southern United States and flood tens of Miles Inland the waves temporarily reverse the flow of rivers rushing up riverbeds like 30t tidal BS tsunami smash into the eastern coast of the United States and 6 hours after impact max out at 600t high walls of water that slam into Europe Africa and the Mediterranean coasts within 15 hours of impact waves arrive

on every Coastline on the planet depending on local topography the ocean sweeps away anything in its path and sucks it back to the Sea when the waters finally Retreat it already sounds like Armageddon but even more disasters are on their way when the big rock strikes its Splash accounts for 25 trillion tons of Earth that it launches on ballistic trajectories some at speeds that exceeds Earth's escape velocity these rocks excited earth gravitational pull to either orbit the Sun and some of this material probably reached the moon but the majority of ejected debris returned back to

Earth within the hour these glass-like chunks called te ties some as large as buses but most the size of marbles p help the Earth at speeds ranging from 160 to 320 kmph in Lethal quantities regardless of where any remaining dinosaurs were on Earth they were hit with this fiery hail storm but these glass bullets didn't need to hit the dinosaurs to be fatal as these te ties fall their friction with the atmosphere emits enough thermal radiation to set fires across the planet by some estimates the combined heat of the returning Embers heats the planet to

the equivalent of an oven set to broil most of the world's trees burn which is perhaps why the only bird species that survive the impact are those that nest on the ground of the few larger land animals to avoid Extinction nearly all have had some means of Escaping The Heat they either could borrow like small mammals snakes and lizards or Escape into water like crocodiles or Turtles even if the poor dinosaurs were on the other side of the world they would have needed to find protection from the initial heat block in a final piece of

terrible luck for the dinosaurs chickaloo happens to strike an area rich in oil and sulfur the impact ejects 100 billion tons of vaporized sulfur and 30,000 quadrillion gallons of water into the atmosphere which then condenses into massive storm clouds and falls back as torrents of acid rain that acidified the oceans in the higher latitudes Continental wide snow storms deposit tens of feet of snow per day but the global Deluge doesn't last long because in addition to water chickalo vaporizes and explosively ejects 150 football stadiums worth of oil from the Yucatan Bedrock this oil condenses in

the stratosphere as a black suit layer covering the Earth like a coat of black paint unlike the sulfur and Wildfire smoke the carbon circulates high above the cloud layer stopping it from raining back down and that becomes another big problem the soot layer remains in the atmosphere reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches earth's surface by 90% for at least 2 to 3 years the initial oven-like heat brought on by the returning Tech ties is followed by a deep and longlasting freeze global temperatures drop by an average of almost 50° the only place on Earth

to avoid this deep freeze a Madagascar India and Indonesia which were Tropical Islands during this time in the global chill evaporation almost ceases dropping rainfall by 80% nearly every spot on earth outside of these Tropical Islands dries into a desert where did this giant rock come from and is there another one out there headed for us researchers using a supercomput studied asteroid Evolution using data from known asteroids the two member team of avilo and Amir surj suggested that the chickaloo asteroid likely originated from the O Cloud a sphere of debris at the edge of the

solar system it could have been a much larger Comet that was pushed off course by Jupiter's gravitational field and sent close to the Sun where it broke into several pieces these fragments can cross the Earth's orbit and hit the planet once every 250 to 730 million years judging from this study it's not a matter of if we could be hit by another giant rock from outer space but when on Saturday December the 11th 2021 NASA revealed that a 330 M long asteroid named 4660 nerus screened past Earth around 3.8 million km at a speed of

6.5 km/s while you might not think this is very close any slight deviation in its orbit could put it on a direct course with us and smash into the Earth in the future astronomers are tracking this potentially hazardous Rock and say it'll come within 1 1 million km of Earth on Valentine's Day in 2060 buy your flowers and get those proposals done early just in case keep in mind the asteroid that caused the chili abinsk explosion in Russia in 2013 was just 20 m in size the bad thing is that we don't have any known

way to defend the Earth from a giant space Rock however NASA's Dart Mission or double asteroid redirection test will try to see if a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a Target asteroid and intentionally collide with it causing a kinetic impact that could push the asteroid off a collision course with the Earth dart's Target is Doros an asteroid moonlet which orbits a larger asteroid named Dimos the spacecraft is set to arrive in late September 2022 when the didos system is 11 million km from Earth however it's estimated that the Collision will change the speed of the

moonlet by a fraction of 1% stopping a 10 km wide or bigger asteroid hurtling towards the planet at more than 72,000 km/s will take a lot more than a small spacecraft impacting it perhaps the world would need to try nuclear weapons like in the movie Armageddon about a million years after the extinction of the Dinosaurs the Earth was a very different place from what it is today during this time known as the paleogene period the continents were still in the process of moving and changing shape the planet was much warmer than it is now with

tropical forests spreading across the globe and the sea levels were much higher the earlier paleogene was characterized by the proliferation of mammals birds and reptiles many of which were quite different from the species we see today the ecosystems of the time were also different with different food webs and interactions between species and began to evolve and adapt to the changing environments with the huge dinosaurs now out of the way mammals could exploit the planet's resources for themselves within a few million years of the asteroid impact the fossil record shows an explosion in mamalian diversity there

is abundant fossil evidence for the evolution of shrew likee mammals called Morgan aodds that evolved into the mammals that we see today some of the earliest known fossils of mammals from the Jurassic period around 165 million years ago and include small insect eating animals similar in size and shape to modern day shrews one of these is a 200 million year old species named megazostrodon which measured about 10 to 12 cm long it most likely ate insects and small reptiles and was probably nocturnal because it had a larger brain and the enlarged areas of its brain

were discovered to be those that process sounds and smells this evolutionary trait was likely to avoid being in competition with reptiles or becoming prey to the dinosaurs it might be hard to believe but all living mammals today including us descend from this one line that survived in the oceans the first animals to appear after the dinosaurs were ammonites which were relatives to the modern day Nautilus they were important predators in the ocean and helped to maintain balance in the Marine ecosystem in addition to mammals and ammonites other early animals on Earth after the extinction of

the dinosaurs included birds reptiles and fish the early bird species were mostly small and similar in size to modern day sparrows while the reptiles of the time included turtles lizards and snakes fossil evidence shows that these early mammals changed in size and shape over time as well as in their adaptions to specific habitats and food [Music] sources for example whales evolved from a terrestrial ancestor that lived around 50 to 52 million years ago and gradually became better adapted to life in the water until they became the fully aquatic whales that we know today this animal

is named pacus a four-legged creature about the size of a goat that scientists now recognize as one of the first whales although it had a body of a land animal its head had the distinctive long skull shape of a whales over time these animals adapted to the water and they lost their limbs their nostrils shifted backwards and upwards and for lims turned into flippers and of course they grew in size immensely fossils of pacitas have been discovered in the tethis sea region which was a shallow sea that existed between the ancient continents of gondwana and

lauraa during the masine epoch the oceans were home to a variety of marine animals including many that are still present in the oceans today such as dolphins whales sea lions seals sea turtles and and various types of fish however there were also many prehistoric marine animals that have since gone extinct Megalodon a giant prehistoric shark is thought to have first appeared about 23 million years ago during the Meine Epoch Megalodon was a top predator in the oceans and it's estimated to have grown up to 108 m in length making it one of the largest known

sharks to have ever existed some of the other prehistoric marine animals that were present in the oceans during the time the megal was swimming around were creatures such as basilosaurus which was a large prehistoric whale that could grow longer than 15 m in length and lived during the eosine epoch and is one of the earliest known whales there was another top predator in the oceans at that time and it was something even bigger than Megalodon we're talking about liviatan a prehistoric whale that lived around 8 to 12 million years ago during the Meine Epoch this

whale is estimated to have been about 13 M long and had massive teeth suggesting that it was a formidable Predator the latan is a close relative of modern sperm whales but there were more than just sharks and whales in the seas and oceans dunois was a massive prehistoric fish that lived During the devonian period and was known for its huge size powerful jaws and bony armor the infamous mososaurus that the Jurassic Park movies brought to life was a type of marine reptile that lived during the late Cretaceous Period the largest fossil specimen measured was a

whopping 17 M long mosasaurus had a long streamlined body with four flippers and a powerful tail that allowed it to swim rapidly through water its skull was elongated and had numerous sharp pointed teeth which it used to catch fish and other prey but despite its size and fearsome appearance mosasaurus was not a dinosaur but a type of lizard and is considered to be one of the largest and most successful marine reptiles to have ever lived and then there was archelon a type of sea turtle that lived during the late Cretaceous Period and was one of

the largest known Turtles to have ever existed these are just a handful of the many creatures that evolved and adapted to Aquatic Life but it was not just in the oceans that life Diversified and exploded into many different species there were many strange and bizarr looking creatures that appeared on land as well creatures that lived on land such as rodents evolved from early shrew likee mammals and diversified into a variety of species including mice rats squirrels beavers and many others carnivores also evolved from early shrew likee mammals and gave rise to cats dogs bears and

other predator species [Music] members of the cat family felid are believed to have evolved from a group of small shrew likee mammals called mcids which lived during the paleocene epoch approximately 66 to 56 million years ago the mids were a diverse group of carnivorous mammals that were adapted to hunting small prey modern day Mongo's can trace their Origins to mcids over time some miacid species evolved specialized features that made more efficient Hunters such as retractable Claws and more powerful jaws one of these specialized mcids called prolis is considered to be one of the earliest known

cat-like animals pluralis lived during the oligoene epoch around 30 million years ago and had several features that are characteristic of Modern Cats including retractable Claws and a more powerful bite prois evolved and diversified eventually giving rise to various lineages of cats with different anatomical features including the saber-tooth cats one of the most well-known groups of saber-tooth cats is the smad dantini tribe which included Smilodon and home aetherium these cats were well known by their long saber likee K9 teeth which were used for hunting and possibly for defense against predators the earliest known members of the

dog family canedy are believed to have appeared during the eosine epoch around 56 to 33.9 million years ago one of the earliest known cedes is a small fox-like animal called hesperion which lived in what is now North America around 40 million years ago hesper Roan is believed to be the ancestor of all modern canids including dogs wolves foxes and coyotes but there were other Predators aside from the prehistoric cats and dogs roaming the plains Terror Birds known as Forest russets are a group of large flightless predatory birds that were native to the Americas approximately 2

million years after the extinction of the Dinosaurs the exact timing of the appearance of the terror Birds is not well established but it's believed to have been in the late paleos scene or early eosine about 62 to 58 million years ago titanis weri was one of the last and largest species of terror bird these birds dominated the continent for millions of years before going extinct around 1 .8 million years ago possibly due to climate change and competition from other Predators titanis was likely a carnivorous bird that fed on a variety of prey that may have

included other birds mammals reptiles and possibly even large insects and invertebrates fossils of titanis have been found in various locations in North and South America and some of the bones show signs of carnivorous feeding including tooth marks and damage caused by digestion it's interesting to note that while some Modern birds are descendants of dinosaurs the forest RDS are not they are a separate and distinct group of birds that evolved independently from dinosaurs and belong to a group of flightless birds known as palogy which also includes the modern ostrich emu kiwi and the caori which is

the deadliest bird in the world but Terra Birds weren't the only interesting and bizarre creatures to appear [Music] several species of prehistoric sloths evolved and lived during the scoic era which spans from about 66 million years ago to the present day ground sloths were the size of huge bears that lived from the oligoene epoch to the pene epoch which spanned from about 33.9 million years ago to 11,700 years ago they were quadrupedal and had large claws that were likely used for defense and digging tree sloths lived from the oligoene epoch to the present day they

were arboreal and had long Limbs and curved claws that allowed them to move easily through the trees today the only surviving species of tree sloth is the two- toad sloth and three toad sloth but where are the snakes you might be asking The evolutionary history of snakes is complex and not fully understood but scientific evidence suggests that snakes evolved from a group of small lizard-like ancestors called stem squamates that lived more than 100 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs these early stem squamates were likely small insect eating creatures that lived on the

forest floor much like the early shrew like creatures over time some of these stem squamates evolved becoming more elongated and legless the earliest known fossils of snakes such as earist Underwood eye date back to around 95 million years ago and show features that are similar to those of modern snakes such as the presence of a flexible skull and a long slender body Titan B would evolve from a small group of Bowers and is considered to be the largest snake ever discovered with the largest known specimens estimated to have reached lengths of up to 12.8 M

long and weighed up to 1,135 kg so while snakes did not evolve directly from Tiny shrew likee creatures they did evolve from small lizard-like ancestors during the time of the dinosaurs and have since evolved to become the diverse group of animals that we know today and finally we come to our own ancestors fossil evidence shows that early primates had small bodies long tails and grasping hands and feet adaptations that would have been useful for climbing and foraging for food in trees over over time primates evolved into the diverse groups of primates that we have today

including monkeys apes and humans but there's so much more to cover about our own species and we'd need more time so if you want to see that in another video let us know in the comments if you enjoyed the video show us some support with a like we appreciate it and make sure to subscribe to stay tuned here for more videos in the series thanks for watching [Music]