At long last it is finally time to return to the History of the Earth! Picking up where we left off at the end of the Permian and taking our first steps into the next major chapter in the story of our world. And we see how the stem mammals form the previous era begin to lose their grip on the world because it seems the planet itself is working against them. There is only one massive continent called Pangea, which causes drought conditions world wide and will push the already stressed survivors of the great dying even further as they attempt to gain control of a largely vacant desert world. This all leads to the reptiles having an advantage in this new hot environment. Setting the tone for the next 230 million years.

If there is one thing that has been proven time and time again as we journey through the history of life, it is that no species lasts forever… Extinction is in fact a natural part of life. As long as the world keeps changing there will be species who succeed in adapting to those changes, and others who fail. That being said, there are also moments in geological history that there is such an overwhelming loss of life that they are seen as one of Earth’s great mass extinctions. This has happened five time throughout our planets history…. But even among these great catastrophes, this one stands out… With an absolutely unprecedented 70% of terrestrial species and 96% of marine species dying out at the end of the Permian, this is the closest our planet has ever come to becoming a dead world. Come join me as we conclude the Paleozoic Era with the worst thing to ever happen to life on Earth… The only event in our planets history worthy of the title “The Great Dying”

We have finally come to the end of the final chapter in the Paleozoic Era. The age before the Dinosaurs has been filled with so many challenges, but the synapsids have managed to overcome them all. There is only one thing standing in the way of the stem mammals grip over the planet.

As we head into the final period of the Paleozoic Era, we find ourselves in a much cooler and dryer world than in the previous Carboniferous. The giant bugs are gone, but in there place is the ancestors of the mammals had made their bid for world domination. in this episode, we will see how these early Synapisids adapted to the continents coming together, an Ice age beginning and the interior of the huge landmass of Pangea turning into a desert.

Moving forward through time, we now come to a very important and interesting chapter in the history of life. The Carboniferous is a time when the land was truly fully populated for the first time with plants and animals. As a global rainforest spread across the world and our tetrapod ancestors had to contend with massive bugs super charged by the high oxygen atmosphere.

As we continue our journey through the history of the Earth we find ourselves at a crossroads of evolution that will lay out the blueprint for things to come. After life had 25 million years to recover during the Silurian, we now find ourselves at a point where two sides have built up their defenses to try to out compete each other. The war between the Arthropods and the fish for control of the sea is about to heat up and as a result other vertebrates will be taking a different path that will lead them to a whole new frontier.

After all the devistation that took place at the end of the Ordovician, life on earth was going to take some time to recover to get back to its previous glory. Luckily a few different groups held on and what followed would be 25 million years of steady warm temperatures that allowed them to thrive. As a result we see many different milestones in the story of life get achieved including the diversification of fish, the rise of new sea scorpion super predators and eventually the very first terrestrial ecosystem! Things are finally starting to get interesting!

This week we finally make it to the next time in the History of the Earth series! During the Ordovician the life on Earth continues to to radiate out into many strange new forms. the Radiodonts that once ruled take on a new role, our ancestors start to gain better defences and several new predators appear and begin to shape what life will look like for many millions of years going forward. We are still a long way from the present day but every step we take forward shows us a world slightly more familiar than before!