The first animals evolved during the absolute worst time on Earth
From Washington Post
About 700 million years ago, Earth turned into a snowball. The polar ice sheets expanded until they engulfed the globe. The oceans turned to slush. The vast expanses of ice and snow reflected the sun's light back into space, exacerbating the endless winter. Temporary relief came in the form of massive volcanic eruptions, which spewed carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and triggered a period of global warming. But that, too, spiraled out of control. Earth became a greenhouse — its oceans hot enough to cook their inhabitants, its blighted landscape further ravaged by floods. Then, suddenly, something about the shifting continents or ash-darkened skies prompted the planet to cool again. The snowball returned.Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/08/17/the-first-animals-evolved-during-the-absolute-worst-time-on-earth/?utm_term=.d9a2b67da938It's hard to imagine a less auspicious time to be a tiny creature trying to eke out an existence. But this period, called the Cryogenian, is when complex animal life got going. From the wreckage of this ice-and-fire-scourged planet emerged the evolutionary group that would give rise to jellyfish and corals, mollusks, snails, fish, dinosaurs, beetles, birds and, eventually, all of us.
This is no coincidence, scientists say. In paper published this week in the journal Nature, researchers report that the appearance of complex, multicellular animals is inextricably linked to a boom in algae enabled by the same destructive forces that made the Cryogenian seem so hellish.
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Just goes to show when Mother Nature is done with us, poof, in comes the next tenants.