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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (68661)	9/19/2015 11:31:28 AM
From: TigerPaw	1 Recommendation Recommended By 2MAR$ Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 69300

during the last 600mil yrs very active continent & sea shifts I think it's important to point out the context in which continental drift is important. Life began on this planet 4 billion years ago and for most of that time it didn't change very quickly. After a billion years or so aerobic lifeforms began to replace anaerobic lifeforms in a process that continues for another 2 1/2 billion years. That was very gradual. after 3 1/2 half billion years life on this planet was still all single cell organisms. However, once the continental plates broke up and started providing different changing habitats the creatures of the planet began changing much more rapidly, first in millions of years, then in thousands. (These are average rates, any individual species changes when it changes). That is the significance of 600 million years ago. I find this period interesting not only for the implications to evolution, but because I have not seen a definitive answer of why the surface of the earth broke up into plates. One hypothesis is that the interior contracted as the planet cooled and the surface naturally cracked, while another posits that a large meteorite shattered the surface on impact.