I think I also read somewhere that during the Carboniferous, certain molds and bacteria that are able to digest plant matter/detritus didn't exist yet. So in other words, plants and trees would eventually die and get replaced, but the plant matter that they left behind didn't decompose because there were no organisms (yet) to take advantage of it. This is also why the carbon remained locked in the trees even after they died. It's such a weird thing to think about. There were endless forests but no rotting leaves on the ground.
Only thing I'd be scared of is the crunch factor with all these beasts (especially insects) and the fires, but damn me if I didn't run around like a dumb kid playing with the leaves until I was eaten alive 😂
Yes! So rainforests today don't make soil carbon storage the same way they did back then. The coal and oil we got in the Carboniferous is the only supply we've got
@@aidenmartin6674 Debris? Oxygen levels were the true risk there. Even a small fire would be extremely hazardous. Just imagine, being in an environment that is on constant risk of "explosion".
It doesn't need to be said, except to feed the almighty algorithm, but this is one of the best series on RU-vid right now. Keep up the amazing work and educating the world of our past.
Tiktaalik was our high school meme. We felt so sorry for him. His eyes in all the pictures were so sad, as if he understood everything and was disappointed in everything.
It's not necessarily confirmed that higher oxygen levels are the primary reason certain arthropods reached large sizes in this period. Mark P. Witton, for instance, writes that Pulmonoscorpius may be able to do fine at current oxygen levels if its respiratory system functioned as well as a coconut crab's.
Also keep in mind there there weren’t very many vertebrate megafauna so insects took up the role. Like how giant tortoises took the role of grazers in the Galapagos.
Contrary to what some might infer from the context it got presented in the "coconut crab" Birgus latro (@09:56) isn't breathing through trachea - instead it spends its plantonic larvae stadia and its early life as a more developed young crayfish breathing through gills (and carries an empty shell on its back as all hermit crabs are known for but will eventually grow too big to find shells and will further carry its abdomen bend under its carapax) until it switches to a terrestrial lifestyle. It now will breath with something one could call "pseudo lungs" - one can clearly recognize the pair of bulbs its shell forms on its back to create the cavities for B. latro's lung analogs in the provided image.
A global rain forest! With no predators big enough to eat me, the Carboniferous sounds like a perfect tourist destination - if only the high oxygen level didn't cause my internal organs to spontaneously combust! Oh, and congrats on your and TimTim's latest evolutionary advance :)
I was very much looking forward to this part. You hear about all the things like big bugs and amphibians, all about the forests but almost never why it all collapsed. Certainly I am glad you're making these videos
Actually, whilst large amounts of 02 no doubt helped, many palaeontologist believe that the major reason for all the giant arthropods was due to a lack of competition with vertebrates, in particular ammonites. Due to not needing to molt an exoskeleton, we could grow to megafaunal size much faster & with much less energy expenditure.
"We"? Now I'm just impressed that this comment exists at all. Doesn't seem like human typing instruments would fit arthropods well under any circumstances.
I absolutely adore this series and I’m so glad I stumbled across your channel a few months ago. Thanks for all the amazing content you bring us! I look forward to more amazing stuff in the future!
A great video teaching us about a fascinating period 👍 Just two points. 1. Early synapsids had some upsides over early sauropsids, but ðe same is true ðe oðer way round. For example, sauropsids have tough beta-pleated horn proteins while we only have alpha-helical horn-proteins. 2. Not all sauropsids had two openings behind each eye; ðe diapsids did, but many basal sauropsids ("anapsids") didn’t. I’d love you to make a video about a spellbinding group of reptiles (= amniotes) from ðis spellbinding period, who pioneered parental care (Dendromaia, Heleosaurus), have been definitively shown to possess squamate-like scales (Ascendonanus), and have ðe first known two-legger in ðeir ranks (Cabarzia): the varanopids.
This was provided by the algorithm. I watched the intro and stopped, went back and watch all the previous videos first. Now I'm back. You do splendid work. Thank you.
I'm honestly looking really forward to finding out what TimTim's final form will be. We all know (or at least hope) you're going to evolve back into Steve... TimTim always seems to be something closely related but not identical. Maybe he'll be a chimp. But I'm personally hoping for a ruffed lemur.
I am too, I love that Tim Tim has become our little buddy on this journey through time. I hope he still makes appearances in videos after this series is over 👾
You absolutely rock as a science presenter. Your avatar leveling up is hilarious and your content is presented in an entertaining and understandable way. I'm always delighted to see a new video by you. It will be a sad day when we run out of earth periods. ;-)
Sharks didn’t claim the seas during the Carboniferous: things like eugeneodontids were not actually sharks. It would take until the Cretaceous for sharks to start breaking into the apex predator niches, and until the Cenozoic for them to truly take over (alongside the cetaceans).
In honor of the Halloween season, here's some nightmare fuel for you. Somewhere in the multiverse, there is a version of Earth where arthropods evolved complex lungs and grew to the size of elephants.
In all honesty, theoretically arthropods exo skeletal system should be able to support more mass then the internal skeletons of other animals. It's just extremely costly.
@@PaleoAnalysis isn't the fact that they must shed one exoskeleton to grow another a problem with regard to truly large sizes? How would a blob of protoplasm the size of an elephant hold itself together without any skeletal structure to latch on to?
@@ias400 The new one grows inside the old one. It's not like they shed their exoskeleton and then grow a new shell. Granted, the new one is soft for a while and needs to dry out.
@@ias400 It's less the invert is a giant blob of protoplasm without support and more the exoskeleton grows so thick and heavy that it has trouble shedding it.
Really enjoyable and educational content, thanks so much. Delighted I found your channel. I’m watching for the last few months, I’ve caught up on all your videos, really quality production 😊
9:40 Related to the part you said about arthropod size being proportional to oxygen levels, that’s not been true for a long while. Well, I mean to say it doesn’t paint the whole picture. If we were to predict the average size of bugs based off of the modern oxygen level, modern bugs ought to be larger than they in fact are. This trend of smaller-than-predicted invertebrates begins around the end of the Jurassic-interestingly aligning remarkably well with the emergence of birds. Being a big bug perhaps began to mean being a big meal for the insectivorous birds, and so evolutionary pressure selected for smaller sizes. EDIT: Not saying you don’t know this / only chose to omit this nuance for the sake of keeping the video on topic btw. Just wanna give some context to my fellow comment sectioneers. I love this series, please keep it up!
You know, if school had been this interesting, I’d probably be a scientist now. How is it that this fascinating content can be made so utterly uninteresting by textbook authors and curriculum creators? Thank you for helping me continue to learn more and more about our world!
@@StonedtotheBones13 This may come as something of a surprise to you, but students have been complaining about educators being boring since _long_ before standardized testing was implemented.
@@stevenschnepp576 that may be, as it's a skill like any other. However, test scores are largely useless and we'd probably have way more ppl interested in STEAM if the focus was put only on the students (us), and learning, like it is here. Or put another way, you can only split your attention so many ways and invariably smthn suffers for it. Tho you do ofc have to worry about RU-vid itself...
@@stevenschnepp576And yet we haven't always had the influence of the Rockefellers and the intentional erosion of education systems by powerful corporations and a few politicians. At least not on this scale. Perhaps this has something to do with massive industries disliking the idea of an intelligent populace that understands the world around it enough to interfere with profits. See the oil and gas industries vehemently denying climate change for an example.
You're onto something special with this series, it's so good to see a paleontology channel work hard to be entertaining and grow as a result. Keep it up!.
Anyone else feel like a kid again watching Discovery or NatGeo? Like, even though this video is new I feel so nostalgic watching it. It just has that feel.
Great video! For future eras, I feel like things are getting so complex that it might be worthwhile to split them into multiple parts? Like the Permian alone will have a ton of ground to cover.
Recently I saw a video, telling that arthropleura actually grew to the huge size BEFORE oxygen level raised much, and now no millipedes are that large likely because of predators and other reasons, but not the oxygen levels.
Amazing Video! Impossible to stuck this period in a short Video and explain everything correctly! False, you dit it quite well! 🖖🤓 Interesting to so how the tiny guys evoled 🙃 I am very excited to see where this journey will take us! 😅😉 However, one thing has to be added to this video. One thing must not forget... how much food there was on land. An oversupply. And almost no serious competition for these resources. These were further factors why the arthropods could reach and maintain such an immense size. Oxygen levels alone are not the only factor. There were times when there was a similarly high level of oxygen, but the arthropods never reached that size again. 😉 And this is the reason why, IMO.
It is my personal headcanon that arthropods just have alt accounts, and every time some extinction happens and one cracked build of theirs gets banned, they're like "DON'T MIND IF I DO" and take over LITERALLY EVERY NICHE for the 15th time this week.
I am so into the series! I can’t help thinking how perfect these would be for kids in school. Please tell me you’ve had teachers using these in class! My son just started school so I’m very much in mom mode lately
I finally found the best time to watch this great channel. I get in bed were it is nice and quiet and relaxing and can fully enjoy this fantastic presentation of our past. Thank you.
If I recall, part of the reason the carbon deposits created in this period are so immense is because the bacteria which would otherwise cause plant life, notably the incredibly prevalent pseudo trees, to decompose hadn't yet evolved and so they quite literally, as stated, would simply pile up in conditions highly contusive to coalification and the like.
Well, look on the bright side... you're not alone. Because nobody fully understands the enigma of evolution that is Helicoprion. And as I hinted at in this video, I will be making mention of this creature when we get to its respective period. 🙂
The O2 theory of bug size is starting to be challenged. They found one of the giant Millipedes (arthropleura) WAY earlier when the O2 would not have been all that higher than it is now.
Yet another great episode. I am glad to see that you have attracted a sponsor, and now a request. Please do not put your sponsor's message in the middle of the video; it is very distracting, and a pain to skip over. When you put them at the start, or at the end, as you did in this one, I will watch them; but if they are in the middle I will skip over them. I'm happy you've got a sponsor, I'm looking forward to the next in the series, please keep up the fantastic work.
Personally if I may ask. I really like your channal and this series, but I was wondering why you chose to do the Carboniferous as a single period, where as some treat it into two periods, The Mississippian and Pennsylvanian.
Because those divisions are basically only ever used in North America, and even then I don't see them used nearly so much anymore as I do in older material.
Meganeura actually isn’t a dragonfly itself but is part of an extinct genus of insects called the gryphon flies which were very similar in build to modern dragonflies. The gryphon flies would also continue in the permian era.
Those who are interested in knowing more about the Carboniferous sharks, check out Bear Gulch Limestone, a formation famous for having a lot of different shark species And all of them are like, aliens to me
