Rexter Panimbatan

Origins of Life on Earth: Bacteria, Plants, and Animals

 4.65 billion years ago: Earth is formed

 4 billion years ago: The first life on Earth was simple, prokaryotic bacteria.
 600 million years ago: Aquatic plants and animals evolved. It is likely that life
originated in water because it offered early organisms more temperature
stability compared to land, currents provided early movement, and they didn’t
have to fight gravity.
 500 million years ago: Huge period of evolution and diversification of life
known as the Cambrian Period.
 400 million years ago: Terrestrial plants and animals evolved.
 65-250 million years ago: Dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era.
 200,00-300,000 years ago: Homo sapiens, early ancestors of humans, evolved.

Snowball Earth

At least three times in Earth’s history, the planet was engulfed almost entirely in ice–
an event called Snowball Earth. These events happened between 580 and 750 million
years ago. Evidence for Snowball Earth comes from sedimentary rocks. In a normal
ice age, the types of rock deposited by glaciers would be found mostly near Earth’s
poles. However, geologists found glacial rocks of similar ages around the world, at
both the poles and equatorial regions. This led to the Snowball Earth theory.

Snowball Earth was caused by a chain of events called a positive feedback loop. Ice
has a high albedo and is very insulating, so it is not heated up efficiently by sunlight.
As ice accumulated on the planet, it increasingly reflected more sunlight and cooled
Earth even further. Thus, this created a cycle of ice formation, increased albedo, and
cooling of Earth which continued until the entire planet was covered in ice.