P. 18 “The Cambrian period has generally been called the “age of invertebrates”. That’s certainly not because anyone sought to glorify our invertebrate ancestry. It’s simply an observation that we didn’t initially see any of our vertebrate ancestors in fossils from Cambrian layers. Notice that we didn’t bcall it the “age of arthropods” or the “age of trilobites”, either of which would be apt. Calling it the “age of invertebrates” is a bit like calling it the “age of no humans”. The name subtly derides the success of arthropods by noting the absence of vertebrates rathar than touting the evolution of exoskeletons. But subsequently we did discover our likely vertebrate ancestor in Cambrian times, and what a humbling event that was. A small creature called Pikaia was discovered in the 515-million-year-old Burgess Shale fossils of Canada. Pikaia was a mere one and a half inch long worm-like creature that burrowed in bottom sediments. She was soft-bodied, but did have an internal supporting structure, a primitive notochord, the ancestral structure of a vertebral column. Pikaia is now regarded as the most likely common ancestor of fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals. But she was such a modest ancestor that nobody lobbied for a renaming of the Cambrian as the “age of Pakaia.. P. 19 “in the waters above, along cruised animals like Anomalocaris, a three-foot-long nightmarish predatory arthropod with long spiny feeding appendages. Anomalocaris paddled along in Cambrian seas, picking off whatever small animals it could catch – do doubt feasting on lots of trilobites. From time to time, Anomalocaris no doubt swooped down to pick off a tender Pikaia for dinner… there is evidence that some trilobites may have been predatory … but still, if Cambrian trilobites had become extensively predatory, then it’s exceedingly unlikely we would be here to pierce together this story.”
P. 71 “Examples of paleopteran insects (a term that means “old wings”), mayflies are among the oldest surviving insects with the most ancient sort of wing design. … a relict that developed flight about 330 million years ago in the Carboniferous times. .. The front wings are much larger than the back and provide most of the lift for flight. All four wings are simple, however, in that they are capable of moving only up and down: mayflies don’t have the ability to flex and twist their wings at the base, as most modern insects are able to do… Mayflies are not very strong or adept fliers. They can dod little more than flutter their wings and drift and glide in easy patterns. Birds catch them easily, and fish eat their fill as mayflies land on water. Yet all the predators in the neighbourhood can’t make a dent in a mayfly swarm… Immediately after mating, the female flies back to the lake, then lands and floats on the surface. If she is lucky enough not to be eaten by a fish, the mother mayfly quickly dumps her eggs into the water as she dies. The eggs sink to the bottom and the cycle of death and rebirth is repeated, just as it has been for 320 million years.”
P. 75 “In the early Carboniferous, most of today’s macroscopic and microscopic consumers of dead wood had not yet evolved. There were no birds, mammals, bees, wasps, bark beetles, wood-boring beetles, bark lice, termites or ants. Moreover, during the Devonian and Carboniferous times, plants became very tall by producing cellulose and lignin, which are very difficult for animals to digest. None of the earliest invests were able to digest raw wood as well. The giant Carboniferous horsetails, like modern horsetails, toughened their vascular tissues with large amounts of silica, making them virtually indigestible. So the late Devonian and Carboniferous really were special for their excess production of plant materials, not only because the moist climate and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide favoured plant growth, but also because plants were able to produce more biomass than the herbivores could consume, for millions of years. The first important insect wood consumers – the wood roaches – did not appear until the Late Carboniferous. They were followed by the appearance of bark live and the diversification of wood-boring beetles in the PErmian. Over time, increasingly more complex communities of wood consumers evolved, and the global bulk production of plant materials of the Carboniferous has never been repeated.”
P. 87 During the Late Carboniferous, the giant griffenflies started chasing a new kind of insect that was tasty but harder to catch than the old net-winged ones. Neoptera, or the new-winged insects, were faster fliers and they had an original trick made possible by tiby articulating skeletal plates, called axillary, sclerites, in the membrane near their wing base. These allowed directional wing movements … they could twist their wings at the base, fold them back over their body, and put them away, making the neoptera much smaller than the older insects, which held their wings constantly outstretched, kitelike. … some were quick on their feet too. Quicky after landing, they would deftly fold their wings and run under a leaf or into cracks and crevices, making themselves tough targets for the air dragons. This was such a successful adaptation that before you could say “cockroach”, the tropical world was infested with them. Several groups of new-winged insects appeared during the Carboniferous, but the roaches (order Blattaria) were by far and away the most successful.. BY the Late Carboniferous there were more than 800 species, and they made up about 60% of the known Carboniferous insects… in terms of species diversity, we should probably call the Carboniferous period the “age of roaches”.
P. 90 “The wood roaches evolved a symbiotic relationship with their gut microorganisms and became the first effective macroconsumers of dead wood. The roaches in turn were the most abundant food source for a host of predators, including scorpions, spiders, centipedes, fish, amphibians, reptiles and the flying air dragons. So with the onset of the roaches an important turn occurred in the cycling of organic molecules. More biomass from plant material escaped the geological cycles of sedimentation and rock formation, and was cycled back into the living world by small animals. The great coal age was coming to an end.”
P. 114 “”Perhaps we can pick one singular moment when the Paleozoic era came to an end. I’d choose the particular day when the final trilobite died. What other creature better symbolises the entire era than the tribolute. Their reign in the oceans lasted for more than 300 million yeas, but some 252 million years ago, on a cloudy morning perhaps, the last one stopped feeding in a shallow tidal pool. Her body floated to the surface, and the retreating tide washed it ashore along with other trilobite carcasses…. There were no birds on that lonely beach, but there was a scurry of small feet,, as first one cockroach, then another, found the castaway body and consumed it. Maybe a lone beetle, preening its antennae on a log nearby, briefly flew down to inspect the scene and partake in the feast. Then it turned, unfolded its wings, and buzzed clumsily into the forest.”
P. 142 “Termites are often regarded as social cockroaches… it is generally agreed that termites evolved from roachlike ancestors, The key to termite behaviour and existence is the their ability to
Digest cellulose from woody plants. Like their near cousins the wood roaches, they accomplished this difficult fear by housing symbiotic organisms in their digestive tracts. Like all other insects, they have an external skeleton, and their foregut and hindgut are lined with skeletal materials., Therefore, when they periodically molt their skeletons, termites lose their symbionts as well, and they must acquire new ones or else they will starve to death. They get their symbiotic gut microorganisms by a process called anal trophylaxis – literally by earting the feces of other termits.. Without ti some of the world’s most impressive and influential societies might never have evolved… solves another serious problem of subsisting in large societies: sewage removal.. Termites avoided all of this not only by eating their feces but also by using it to build tunnels and arches within their nests.”
P. 156 “The flowering plants, the blossom and fruit-producing organisms known to botanists as angiosperms, may have first evolved in the Jurassic period or earlier, but they were initially rare woody shrubs restricted to wet forest habitats. We have fossil flower pollen dating from the Early Cretaceous, 134 million years ago, and fossil leaves and flowers dating to 124 million years ago, and we know that by 120 million years ago the first angiosprems, including such recognisable species as water lillies and magnolias, quickly radiated and diversified. By the Middle Creatacsous, and on to the present day, angiosperms had become the dominant plant species… sweet nectar and nutritious pollen allowed flowers – and insects – to overrun the planet. Plants produce them in sacrificial abundance, enough to feed ravenous hordes of flies, beetles, wasps and moths … until the Cretaceous, their distribution was limited mostly by the constraints of wind pollination. But with the insects’ assistance – and thanks to the energetics of insect flight – plants at this time could spread their genetic material over long distances. Now they could exist as widely dispersed populations, scattered in forests with little wind movement.”
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