New Earth chapter 5: What the Future Holds by WWCB, literature
Literature
New Earth chapter 5: What the Future Holds
Date: 200,000,000 AD
Location: Earth
Changing conditions are always a boost to evolution, and conditions will certainly change again. There will be other extinction events, both minor ones and mass ones. Novopangea will not remain whole for long. Within a few million years it will begin to break up into separate continents again. Each continent will once gain develop its own ecosystems and environments. New organisms will evolve to take advantage of them, taking forms and shapes the mind of a Human likely cannot imagine.
Undoubtedly, the far future will be even wilder.
The End
New Earth chapter 4: The Northern Forest by WWCB, literature
Literature
New Earth chapter 4: The Northern Forest
Date: 200,000,000 AD
Location: Northern Novopangea Forest
The region in the northwest of Novopangea is pounded by saturated onshore winds. The global circulation of the atmosphere brings constant westerlies to this part of the landmass, winds which travel over a vast surface of warm ocean, filling up with moisture as they go. Thick black clouds roll in from the sea and condense into liquid water as soon as they reach land. Sunlight is rarely seen here. Rain falls relentlessly from the overhead darkness, drenching everything below.
With no mountain range to act as a windbreak, the rain-sodden region stretches hundreds of miles inland. Great
New Earth chapter 3: The Rainshadow Desert by WWCB, literature
Literature
New Earth chapter 3: The Rainshadow Desert
Date: 200,000,000 AD
Location: Novopangea Rainshadow Desert
Like a giant spinning top losing its momentum, Earth’s rotation has gradually slowed. Since 200 million AD began, this imperceptible deceleration has added an hour to Earth’s cycle and a day on the planet is now 25 hours long. Furthermore, the Sun’s luminosity has increased, leading to a rise in air temperature. As the hot Sun beats down on the surface waters of the Global Ocean, it warms up the superocean, leading to frequent and very strong hurricanes, increased by the fact that there are no separate continents to regulates these storms’ ferocity.
The east
New Earth chapter 2: The Global Ocean by WWCB, literature
Literature
New Earth chapter 2: The Global Ocean
Date: 200,000,000 AD
Location: The Global Ocean surrounding Novopangea
The mass extinction that ended the time of 100 million AD did not just ravage life on land, life in the oceans was profoundly affected too. Active volcanoes filled the sky with ash and dust, cutting out the sunlight for months on end. Acid rain, formed by sulfur compounds belched out by volcanoes, fell continually into the oceans/seas.
The lack of sunlight and the increase in acidity killed off the plankton in the surface waters and elf to a catastrophic collapse in the oceanic food chain. Typical fish-type Bony Fish – the dominant marine Vertebrate Animals for hun
New Earth chapter 1: The Central Desert by WWCB, literature
Literature
New Earth chapter 1: The Central Desert
Date: 200,000,000 AD
Location: Novopangea Central Desert
The planet has changed. It is 100 million years since the most recent mass extinction event that destroyed most of the life on Earth. The continents have continued to move, drive by the relentless processes of plate tectonics. Now, by 200 million AD, Earth presents quite a different face.
The world has come full circle. For many millions of years, spanning much of the Permian and Triassic period, Earth had one mighty landmass, a supercontinent termed Pangea. Now, hundreds of millions of years later, the continents have once again come together, forming a new single, huge supercontinen
Hothouse Earth chapter 5: Mass Extinction by WWCB, literature
Literature
Hothouse Earth chapter 5: Mass Extinction
Date: 100,000,000 AD
Location: Earth
A black cloud reaches across the blue sky of the world. It is generated by volcanic convulsions in the subduction zone between the continents of Asia and Antarctica. Tall, jagged volcanoes erupt in huge explosions, sending pyroclastic flows – mixtures of gas and superheated rock – racing down the slopes, incinerating almost everything in their path.
More volcanic activity blasts out along the western edge of the Asian continent and the northern edge of Africa. There, basaltic volcanoes throw up a continuous stream of black lava that creeps over the land. More and more lava spews from the moun
Hothouse Earth chapter 4: The Great Plateau by WWCB, literature
Literature
Hothouse Earth chapter 4: The Great Plateau
Date: 100,000,000 AD
Location: The Great Northern Plateau
Since the Eocene epoch of the Paleogene period, around 45 million BC, Australia became separated from Antarctica slowly north across the Southern Ocean and the Pacific Ocean towards Asia. Where the Australian and the Eurasian Plates met, one was pushed below the other, creating a subduction zone to the southeast of the Asian landmass. As the ocean lithosphere – the rigid outer layer of Earth – was drawn down into the mantle and melted, new magma was produced, resulting in large amounts of volcanic activity.
Now, during the time of 100 million AD, Australia shot life a s a
Hothouse Earth chapter 3: The Antarctic Forest by WWCB, literature
Literature
Hothouse Earth chapter 3: The Antarctic Forest
Date: 100,000,000 AD
Location: The Northern Antarctic Rainforest
Antarctica no longer lies over Earth’s South Magnetic Pole. The Antarctic Plate has been moving northwards for around 100 million years, gradually creeping towards the southern edge of Asia. This tectonic plate has carried the continent out of the polar zone, through the temperate zone and across the southern desert belt. Hard as it is to imagine, Antarctica now lies partially in the tropics.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet melted as soon as the landmass began to move into warmer latitudes. The continent’s northern portion’s now lies well within the tropical zone of
Hothouse Earth chapter 2: The Bengal Swamp by WWCB, literature
Literature
Hothouse Earth chapter 2: The Bengal Swamp
Date: 100,000,000 AD
Location: The Bengal Swamp
A number of the continents have traveled vast distances since the Quaternary. As massive raft of land which broke away from Africa along the Great Rift Valley has moved across what was the Indian Ocean and collided with the southernmost corner of Southeast Asia. As the two landmasses came together, a vast inland sea was created between them in the area that was once the Bay of Bengal. The massive forces created by the colliding tectonic plates buckled the landmass, giving rise to a volcanic mountain range along the line of fusion. Over time, the inland sea became almost entirely cut off from t
Hothouse Earth chapter 1: The Shallow Seas by WWCB, literature
Literature
Hothouse Earth chapter 1: The Shallow Seas
Date: 100,000,000 AD
Location: The Northern Shallow Seas
A warm global climate has caused the polar icecaps to melt and sea-levels to rise by around 330 feet more than in the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period. Lower-lying parts of the continents are flooded and the oceanwaters have spread southwards from the Arctic Ocean and eastwards from the Atlantic Ocean. Vast tracts of northern Asia are now almost entirely underwater. The Northern Shallow Seas, which stretch across northern Europe and Asia, are punctuated by rocky islands – peaks of mountains not yet covered by water.
The Sunlight-filled, nutrient-rich waters of the Norther
The Dawn of Earth chapter 1: Proto-Earth by WWCB, literature
Literature
The Dawn of Earth chapter 1: Proto-Earth
Period: Hephaestean
Date: 4,400,000,000 BC
Location: Gaia/Early Earth
A new planet has recently formed in the Solar System. It is known as Gaia. So far during its first eon of existence, the Hadean, it has been completely absent of life. There are hellish conditions prevailing on Gaia: as stated before, the planet has just formed, 200 million years earlier, and is still very hot owing to its recent accretion, the abundance of short-lived radioactive elements, great volcanic activity, and frequent collisions with other astral bodies, namely meteors and their meteorites. It would seem Gaia has no hope of ever sustaining life in its future. B
The Dawn of Earth chapter 2: Life Galore by WWCB, literature
Literature
The Dawn of Earth chapter 2: Life Galore
Period: Early Cambrian (Terreneuvian, Cambrian Stage 2)
Date: 521,000,000 BC
Location: Coastal waters near northwestern Gondwanaland.
The Gondwanaland beach is completely barren as the waves lap its edge. During the Cambrian, the lands are comparatively barren of life, with nothing more complex than a microbial soil crust near the ocean edges and a few primitive Mollusks that occasionally emerge to browse on the microbial biofilm during the hide tide. Most of the continents are dry and rocky due to a lack of vegetation. Shallow seas flank the margins of several continents created during the breakup of the supercontinent Pannotia. The seas
The Dawn of Earth chapter 3: Evolutionary Makeover by WWCB, literature
Literature
The Dawn of Earth chapter 3: Evolutionary Makeover
Period: Late Cambrian (Furongian, Cambrian Stage 10)
Date: 488,000,000 BC
Location: Coastal waters near northwestern Gondwanaland.
As time passes, the Cambrian, the first period of the Paleozoic era and of the Phanerozoic eon, eventually comes to a close, with the Cambrian-Ordovician Extinction Event. This event is caused by a combination of climate change and a depletion of oxygen in marine waters. It eliminates many shelled Brachiopods and Eel-like Conodont Vertebrates, and severely reduces the number of Trilobite species – however, all three of these Animal groups in general will live further on.
As for the rest of the Conodonts
Ordovician Depths chapter 1: No Place for Humans by WWCB, literature
Literature
Ordovician Depths chapter 1: No Place for Humans
Period: Late Ordovician (Middle Katian)
Date: 450,000,000 BC
Location: Southeastern Laurentian coast
Earth during the Ordovician is a very alien world compared to the very distant future, the landmasses being almost completely barren. Life has yet to officially colonize the land. The ground reveals hardly more than a single speck of life - at most a few things such as a stain of lichen, green algae, Fungi, or Liverwort either under a rock near the shorelines or right directly on the water's edge. Aside from that there are no other land Plants, no other similar-appearing land lifeforms, no land Animals (flying or flightless), no nothing. Th
Ordovician Depths chapter 2: Nasty Nippers by WWCB, literature
Literature
Ordovician Depths chapter 2: Nasty Nippers
Period: Late Ordovician (Middle Katian)
Date: 450,000,000 BC
Location: Northeastern Laurentian coast
Though nothing in the Animal kingdom permanently lives on land, the odd set of footprints can be seen on the wet sand just out of the water. In some ways they are like the tracks of an Insect, with two parallel lines made by the Creature’s feet. But the distance between the feet reveals that this is a very different sort of Arthropod - at the same time, Insects have not even evolved yet. However, the tracks extend no further than a meter or two inland and then lead straight back into the water. These are more than just footprints in t
Ordovician Depths chapter 4: A Deep-Water Menace by WWCB, literature
Literature
Ordovician Depths chapter 4: A Deep-Water Menace
Period: Late Ordovician (Middle Katian)
Date: 450,000,000 BC
Location: Northeastern Laurentian coast
The Eurypterids in themselves are fearsome in the Ordovician seas. But their top predator status holds good only for the shallows. Head out any deeper and the Eurypterids also have to watch their backs. Just half a mile from the malodorous shoreline the seabed starts to drop dramatically. A mere 30 feet deep becomes 100 feet becomes 1,000 feet. This plunging wall marks the boundary around a deeper domain ruled by a predator an order of magnitude larger than anything else alive at this time; larger, in fact, than anything Earth has seen in i
Ordovician Depths chapter 5: Blind Terror by WWCB, literature
Literature
Ordovician Depths chapter 5: Blind Terror
Period: Late Ordovician (Middle Katian)
Date: 450,000,000 BC
Location: Northeastern Laurentian coast
The drawbacks in maneuverability are no real limitation for an orthoconic Nautiloid like Cameroceras, because by and large their prey cannot see them coming. At this stage in Earth's history, Animal sight is rudimentary. Eurypterids and Trilobites, for example, have some of the most advanced vision of all in the Ordovician, but even their eyes are restricted to seeing the difference between areas of light and dark; in the gloom of the deeper water where a number of their species hunt and/or forage (around 300-600 feet below the surface), th
Life's Renaissance chapter 1: Shallow Seas of Life by WWCB, literature
Literature
Life's Renaissance chapter 1: Shallow Seas of Life
Period: Late Silurian (Late Přídolí)
Date: 419,200,000 BC
Location: Northeastern coast of Avalonia
Beneath the gentle Silurian waves, a wondrous world is alive. Hundreds of millions of years since the Cambrian, the fight for survival has filled the Silurian seas with a great variety of organisms. A significant evolutionary milestone during this time is the diversification of Gnathostome Vertebrates, including the newly-evolved Bony Fish and Acanthodians, the latter developing earlier on in the period. Reef abundance is patchy, primarily dominated by filter-feeding coral, Bryzoans, Sea Lilies and Sponges alongside Sea Urchins
Life's Renaisance chapter 2: Moving Further Inland by WWCB, literature
Literature
Life's Renaisance chapter 2: Moving Further Inland
Period: Late Silurian (Late Přídolí)
Date: 419,200,000 BC
Location: Northeastern coast of Avalonia
As the month passes by, the local Cephalaspis are getting restless. It is time for them to congregate in great shoals and travel to their annual spawning grounds. This area they seek, though, is located in an unlikely place: a freshwater river, inland in the microcontinent of Avalonia.
With the supercontinent Gondwanaland covering the Equator and much of the Southern Hemisphere, a large ocean, Panthalassa, occupies most of the northern half of the globe. The high sea levels of the Silurian and the relatively flat land (with few
I will be uploading typed copies of the chapters from the Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts companion books, as well as many other sources, so they get more attention. They will be slightly changed for two major reasons. One being to be more paleontologically up-to-date and the other to be a bit more serious.