Читать книгу Oceans For Dummies - Joseph Kraynak - Страница 50

Buckle up, folks … this is where things start to get really interesting. Don’t be turned off by the hard-to-pronounce words or events that can be a little confusing (we had to study this many times before it sunk in). This section begins the story of the evolution of complex life-forms on Earth, and it is a fascinating one. If anything, it reminds us of the incredible dynamism and complex wonder that resulted in … well … us. So read on and marvel at just how amazing this world really is.

The Paleozoic era spans from about 541 to 251 million years ago, when life underwent enormous diversification. (Paleozoic roughly translates to “ancient life.”) It began with the Cambrian explosion (when nearly all major animal phyla appeared) and ended with The Great Dying (a mass extinction) and can be subdivided into the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian periods.