Earth May Have Briefly Supported Complex Life Long Before We Arrived

First off all let me just say that 'briefly' in this report is actually 400 million years!

"Complex life on Earth is generally thought to have appeared at least 1.75 billion years ago. But a new study suggests there may have been an earlier period where complex life could have evolved, before disappearing and then reappearing again......They describe how isotopic ratios in the element selenium in sedimentary rocks suggest a high presence of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere between 2 and 2.4 billion years ago."

I #ing love science article


National Academy of Sciences USA

So anyone got anything to add?

The world had time for one small furry animal to evolve (it may have looked as a cross between a cockroach and a gerbil) and it looked at the world around it just before jumping into an active volcano. Thus life ended just as it began.

a reply to: UltraMind

Just before the snow ball earth period which lasted roughly 2.2 billion to between 750 and 650 million years ago.
It is speculated that this period was one in which the earth was very much colder than today, the sun being younger output less heat than it does now and the ocean's may have frozen over right to the equator turning the earth for many period's in this time window into the image of Hoth from the Empire strikes back.
www.bbc.co.uk...
snowballearth.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

During this period life on earth ground to a halt except for probably very simple life forms' and of course chemo synthetic life which does not rely on light and oxygen for it's energy but rather the then far more plentiful deep sea geysers which like today spewed force chemical's and heat from below the surface of the crust.

If true then if somebody HAD evolved, complex life by my interpretation meaning people and not just multi-celled and complex organism's then paradoxically they if they had the technology may have fled the earth to escape this devestating period, perhaps to the far more hospitable Mars with it's thick life sustaining atmosphere and liquid ocean which may have existed at that time, if so then we would expect some form of relic of this civilization to exist perhaps on the Moon which being far less active than the earth and even than Mars throughout most of this period and being devoid of atmosphere would therefore have left some trace which would otherwise have succumbed to erosion on either the Earth or Mars

But of course there is no trace is there, or is there, well if there was we would not receive any official declaration of such for a number of reason's, fear of public panic, collapse of religion and by default society which has most of it's moral and ethical code's as well as respect for our authority's based in our religions and of course then there is the whole if there is something potentially better than we have let's not let the world know so we can get our hand's on it before our competitor's do.

What if they were Human or rather we were not Monkey's and had a much older legacy of sentient ancestry, even if that did not mesh with the Anthropologist's semi religous devotion to the way they believe it was, what if we in fact are a very ancient race indeed, nearly extinct several time's over, now if that was the case you would expect us to have many other off shoot's as a species including some that would not live on the earth or at least not with us, they may be grey skinned and large eye'd from living in controlled and dark environment's, larger head's due to more directed evolution of there brain's and due to there longer symbiosis with technology there body's may be smaller and weaker.
Of course nothing like that exist's or does it?.
Footprint's in stone left when it was soft mud etc such as the vandalized and destroyed specimens from the infamous paloxy track's (which someone? apparently took an iron pole to and destroyed).

Not only do I share your hypothesis but I actually take it far beyond into the twilight zone as you can see.

Then again if the nature of the universe is constantly changing due to external alteration's in the membrane interactions which take place in superspace then our now known to be unstable law's of physics could also mean our dating analysis is totally screwed over that time period, the earth could therefore be both far younger and also far older than we estimate as if the law's of physics which we once thought fixed are variable then so too is the rate of radioactive decay itself?.

Wow, normal ATS stuff

a reply to: LABTECH767

What if they were Human or rather we were not Monkey's and had a much older legacy of sentient ancestry, even if that did not mesh with the Anthropologist's semi religous devotion to the way they believe it was, what if we in fact are a very ancient race indeed, nearly extinct several time's over, now if that was the case you would expect us to have many other off shoot's as a species including some that would not live on the earth or at least not with us

I have often speculated as such. Thanks

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: UltraMind

Just before the snow ball earth period which lasted roughly 2.2 billion to between 750 and 650 million years ago.
It is speculated that this period was one in which the earth was very much colder than today, the sun being younger output less heat than it does now and the ocean's may have frozen over right to the equator turning the earth for many period's in this time window into the image of Hoth from the Empire strikes back.
www.bbc.co.uk...
snowballearth.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

During this period life on earth ground to a halt except for probably very simple life forms' and of course chemo synthetic life which does not rely on light and oxygen for it's energy but rather the then far more plentiful deep sea geysers which like today spewed force chemical's and heat from below the surface of the crust.

If true then if somebody HAD evolved, complex life by my interpretation meaning people and not just multi-celled and complex organism's then paradoxically they if they had the technology may have fled the earth to escape this devestating period, perhaps to the far more hospitable Mars with it's thick life sustaining atmosphere and liquid ocean which may have existed at that time, if so then we would expect some form of relic of this civilization to exist perhaps on the Moon which being far less active than the earth and even than Mars throughout most of this period and being devoid of atmosphere would therefore have left some trace which would otherwise have succumbed to erosion on either the Earth or Mars

But of course there is no trace is there, or is there, well if there was we would not receive any official declaration of such for a number of reason's, fear of public panic, collapse of religion and by default society which has most of it's moral and ethical code's as well as respect for our authority's based in our religions and of course then there is the whole if there is something potentially better than we have let's not let the world know so we can get our hand's on it before our competitor's do.

What if they were Human or rather we were not Monkey's and had a much older legacy of sentient ancestry, even if that did not mesh with the Anthropologist's semi religous devotion to the way they believe it was, what if we in fact are a very ancient race indeed, nearly extinct several time's over, now if that was the case you would expect us to have many other off shoot's as a species including some that would not live on the earth or at least not with us, they may be grey skinned and large eye'd from living in controlled and dark environment's, larger head's due to more directed evolution of there brain's and due to there longer symbiosis with technology there body's may be smaller and weaker.
Of course nothing like that exist's or does it?.
Footprint's in stone left when it was soft mud etc such as the vandalized and destroyed specimens from the infamous paloxy track's (which someone? apparently took an iron pole to and destroyed).

Not only do I share your hypothesis but I actually take it far beyond into the twilight zone as you can see.

Then again if the nature of the universe is constantly changing due to external alteration's in the membrane interactions which take place in superspace then our now known to be unstable law's of physics could also mean our dating analysis is totally screwed over that time period, the earth could therefore be both far younger and also far older than we estimate as if the law's of physics which we once thought fixed are variable then so too is the rate of radioactive decay itself?.

Venus would of been the planet of choice, back then the goldilocks zone was smack bang on Venus. Which is interesting as Venus would of looked alot like what Earth does now obviously not geographically.

As our Sun aged it got hotter pushing the goldilocks zone towards Earth and sending Venus into a green house.

As our Sun gets older it will get brighter and warmer again pushing the zone to Mars.

Well I often wonder of the Big bang that created the universe. Suppose that whatever did go bang was a very large planet that supported life.

All life and civilization was destroyed and a small piece of it is what we now call earth, with trace evidence of past life.

originally posted by: tinner07
with trace evidence of past life.

please google "vaporised"

so, ancient advanced civilizations were possible.interesting.

originally posted by: tinner07
Well I often wonder of the Big bang that created the universe. Suppose that whatever did go bang was a very large planet that supported life.

All life and civilization was destroyed and a small piece of it is what we now call earth, with trace evidence of past life.

A "very large planet" exploding would only affect the local solar system it was part of. That and without the Big Bang that planet could not have existed. Even if it did the explosion is orders of magnitude less than what the Big Bang produced - being the entire Universe.

Drip, drip, drip.

So, could they have retreated to Hollow Earth? Off planet? Not saying it's true but no can say it's not either.

a reply to: muSSang

Absolutely correct, with the sun being cooler then Venus would have been in a much more pleasant and life amiable goldilocks zone than it is today and so at that time it's ocean's would have been actually oceans' not acid in the sky and though still thicker than earth it's atmosphere would therefore have been much thinner than today with all that ocean and other now vaporized materials not in it's atmosphere but on it's surface.


Also It is the real twin of earth, two continent's and large ocean basin's, Tectonic plates just like the earth and only slightly smaller than the earth.


Of course the sun rises in the West and the day and night are six month's long while the day and night on mars are at least today almost identical to those of the earth.


Actually Venus would have been the better choice, so much like earth but they would have had to live near to the pole's even then due to it's extremely long day-night cycle, winter being night time and summer it's day time.

www.independent.co.uk...

Today the atmosphere is so dense and the pressure so high at ground level that it actually bend's the light like a fluid, it rain's all the time on Venus (sulphuric acid) but it is so hot it never reaches the ground and there is a trace metal which actually snow's capping some of it's mountains.
en.wikipedia.org...

www.news.com.au...
www.independent.co.uk...
www.space.com...

and there's no evidence for this mental masturbation at all
so you might as well claim that your advanced race was humanoid, blue and lived with nature.
They had valuable natural resources that other less scrupulous organisations wanted to steal and harvest
and only the quick thinking of Papa Smurf saved the day

originally posted by: tinner07
Well I often wonder of the Big bang that created the universe. Suppose that whatever did go bang was a very large planet that supported life.

All life and civilization was destroyed and a small piece of it is what we now call earth, with trace evidence of past life.

The big bang is actually just a name given to an explosion into nothing that gave rise to everything, it is by it's very nature a paradox and indicates that there must have been something before the big bang.

Now when they say big bang what they also talk about is something called a WHITE HOLE, this is the opposite of a black hole (true black hole not brown hole for those more aware of these matters) and instead of sucking time, space and everything into it the white hole actually spewed time and energy and even the basic material of space itself into the universe, indeed it was the seed of the universe or rather the Universe we know called our time space continuum the real universe is something far larger and weirder often termed super space that is outside of our reality but within which our time space continuum exists and maybe many or even an infinite number of totally unrelated other time space continuum also exist there.

I speculated and Einstein also said something similar that a TRUE black hole which is a total singularity equal to E that is it equals the mass of the entire universe because it is a pure gravity well with no mass left inside it just a vortex of gravity may actually be the cause of our universe, how can this be explained.

Imagine matter is like a magnet but not magnetism but rather gravity and it is more like a lens for gravity than the source of gravity, imagine all the universe even empty space has some gravity and that matter from which thing's are made is just space scrunched up into a tight ball so more of it occupies less space, this means that in this space there is also more gravity right?.

Now if you were able to stand at the very middle of a planet or a star in space, the very centre right in the exact middle of it and it was a perfect sphere then were would that lens emit gravity from that point of reference, well it would suggest that gravity in the exact centre would pull outward even if the pressure of the planet or star made that point so tiny it was almost unimaginable, gravity there would be very strange and also at the centre of this point gravity would pull on this tiny point in all direction's.


Now when a star is extremely big and it finished using all it's Hydrogen it start's fusing heavier and heavier element's and it swell's getting larger and larger because the gas it is now made of has larger part's (atoms) than the hydrogen it used to be and behaves differently and eventually it just explodes and the core also collapses, this is called a super nova, the collapsing core if the star was large enough then does not stop collapsing but collapses and collapses into something called black hole, in most cases it probably does stop and becomes what is called a brown hole, this is just a very heavy object with a lot of gravity but if it does become a true black hole then there is something interesting to think about.

What happened to that point at it's very centre were all of that gravity was pulling outward and it got ever smaller, did it rupture time and space itself and become a white hole, inside a black hole and if so did it become a time space continuum, is our universe actually inside a black hole that formed in another universe, if so then object's further away would not be slowing down but potentially actually accelerating as our universe raced outward toward an internal event horizon that surrounded our time space continuum?

Just a thought but I hope that though perhaps I got too technical and a bit far fetched it helps but remember I am not a scientists so some of this site's far more skilled interpreters whom are scientist's could perhaps give you the more orthodox version as mine is not cannon science, and they may be able to make it even easier to understand than my garbled approach.


But if I am right then that universe still exists outside our own and there may still be star's, galaxy's and entire civilization's there and what about outside that universe or what about any true black hole's that may have formed in our universe, could there be universes formed form white hole's that may have formed in them and if so is time relatively speaking stepped, faster in these new time space continuum's and slower in the older one's so that time in the universe outside the hypothetical black hole surrounding our universe would therefore be much, much slower than it is here relative to our perspective and likewise as you go and make a cup of tea in that time could entire civilization's have risen and fallen, entire Galaxy's have gone through there entire life cycle within that time space continuum existing within any true black holes that may have formed within our own time space continuum, is there any end if we were able to look into it or like a fractal pattern is it an almost endless chain of time space continuum's.

Okay, folks....

if you click on the link and look at the original paper.... you will read the following piece of the opening statement:

Here we present selenium geochemical data that indicate an expansion of suboxic (>0.4 μM O2) habitats in the shallow oceans between 2.32 and 2.1 Ga––more than one billion years before eukaryotes become abundant in the fossil record. These environments could have harbored the earliest stages of eukaryotic evolution, but may have been too transient for substantial diversification to occur.

The opening paragraph says:

It has been proposed that an “oxygen overshoot” occurred during the early Paleoproterozoic Great Oxidation Event (GOE) in association with the extreme positive carbon isotopic excursion known as the Lomagundi Event. Moreover, it has also been suggested that environmental oxygen levels then crashed to very low levels during the subsequent extremely negative Shunga–Francevillian carbon isotopic anomaly. These redox fluctuations could have profoundly influenced the course of eukaryotic evolution, as eukaryotes have several metabolic processes that are obligately aerobic. Here we investigate the magnitude of these proposed oxygen perturbations using selenium (Se) geochemistry, which is sensitive to redox transitions across suboxic conditions. We find that δ82/78Se values in offshore shales show a positive excursion from 2.32 Ga until 2.1 Ga (mean +1.03 ± 0.67‰

I speak this language - let me translate

* The Earth is around 5 billion years old.
* About two billion years into Earth's existence (3 billion years ago) as a planet there is evidence of shallow oceans. There is no oxygen in the ocean.
* Earth's atmosphere would have been toxic to modern life (step outside, take a breath, die horribly.)
* About 2.7 billion years ago, there is evidence of some oxygen - along with SOME slight evidence of one-celled cyanobacteria (simple bacteria that can live without oxygen).
* about 2.6 billion years ago there was a rise in the levels of oxygen in the oceans. The atmosphere has almost no oxygen, however. Cyanobacteria show up in the fossil record.
* about 1 billion years ago there's enough oxygen in the ocean that it begins appearing in the atmosphere. * About 500 million years ago, there's finally enough oxygen to support terrestrial life

What the paper says

There may have been a type of one-celled organism present 2.1 billion years ago to 2.3 billion years ago that accounts for the tiny rise in oxygen found in oceanic shales formed in shallow sea beds.

Amazing facts!

a reply to: iWontGiveUP

Superb addition, everything he state's in that video is correct, I have not yet watched it all but what I have watched is totally correct and his note's on global warming VS global cooling are actually very topical.

Hmm double post sorry