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First evidence of long-distance trade by Homo sapiens

Collective learning is another impetus for the decrease in local entropy, at the expense of a huge increase in total entropy, of course.

In Java, Indonesia, Anthropitecus erectus, later popularized as Java Man and today known as Homo Erectus, spreads

Riss Glaciations

More recent mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) shared by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. This is DNA passed down from generation to generation, almost identically, from mother to daughter.

Ancient humanity was nearly wiped out around 900,000 years ago, when the global population shrank to approximately 1,280 reproducing individuals. Furthermore, the population of early human ancestors remained this small for approximately 117,000 years. The statistical method used genetic information from 3,154 living human genomes.

Reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field

Supernova RX J185635-3754 explodes, creating a neutron star 100,000 billion times denser than steel, which is traveling toward Earth at a speed of 100 km/s and will reach it in 300,000 AD, passing 170 light-years away; it is the closest neutron star ever observed (discovered

First possible evidence of Homo erectus’s use and control of fire. This allowed them to occupy part of Europe.

Pleistocene (Cenozoic period, Tertiary era)

Kenya. KNM-ER 1808 is the paleonanthropological code name for a woman who lived 1.7 million years ago, whose skeleton was discovered by Kenyan anthropologist Kamoya Kimeu in 1974 at the Koobi Fora archaeological site in Kenya. She is a female Homo erectus with bone deformities

Appearance of Homo Abilis in Sub-Saharan Africa

The first stone tools were used to open the bones of animal carcasses and eat the marrow. The genus Homo is therefore low in the predatory hierarchy, able to access the carcass only after large predators, hyenas, and vultures.

First ice in the Arctic: it is formed thanks to a change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis and a simultaneous increase in humidity (which causes intense snowfalls) due to the stratification (caused by the reduction of marine recirculation) of the waters of the

The appearance of a supernova in the sky causes serious consequences, first of all probably a notable reduction of the ozone layer, especially at latitudes above 30 degrees.

Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) lives in Ethiopia

First hominids: Ardipithecus Ramidus in Ethiopia

Last gene exchange between the chimpanzee race and that of hominids

Following the upheaval of the Northeastern Andes, which interrupted the connection between the internal sea in the current Amazon rainforest and the Caribbean Sea, the Amazon River was born, draining the remaining lakes within.

Goats evolve in Europe and Africa.

When the African and European continental plates collided, they not only raised new mountains in central Europe, but also created the largest lake the world has ever known. This vast body of water, the Paratethys Sea, is home to species found nowhere else, including the

The upheaval of the Northeastern Andes severed the connection between the inland sea in the current Amazon rainforest and the Caribbean Sea; this triggered the birth of the Amazon River.

The Andes rise

Thirty million years ago, one of the first hominid species, Nsungwepithecus, developed in Europe. In Africa (Tanzania), the first hominid species (Rukwapithecus, which would give rise to orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans) developed only five million years later. Hominids in Africa failed to compete with

The first honeybees, or Apis, evolved. They are a type of vegetarian wasp.

Australia breaks away from Antarctica

Europe. A dramatic change: the Great Cut. The Eocene, with its tropical climate, ends and the Oligocene, with its continental and Arctic climate, begins. The cause appears to be the detachment of South America from West Antarctica, which drastically altered ocean currents. Temperatures in England

First whales. They evolved from what would later become dolphins, a species that (re)entered the seas about 49 million years ago.

Between Greenland and Norway rises an island 500 km long north-south and 15 km wide, of marshy nature, covered with conifers and ferns. No mammals have been found, which probably never arrived here; it now lies 2 km beneath the waves in the middle of

Mass extinction of living species

Rodents and monkeys arrived in South America, likely from neighboring (but not adjacent) Africa. How they got there is still unclear, but they probably migrated gradually from one island to another.

branching off between the species that would later become dolphins, in the sea, and the one that remained on land, which would give rise to, for example, hippos. 15 million years later, whales would also branch off.

Early Eocene. Palm trees grow in the Antarctic, crocodiles splash around in the shallows of England. The climate is significantly warmer than today. This shows that a very warm climate doesn’t necessarily mean problems for life. On the contrary, it could mean more species living

Cava della Pesciara, Verona, Italy. An exceptional fossil deposit forms here, demonstrating how modern corals evolved in the Tethys Sea, between Europe and Africa.

At the end of the Paleocene, Uintatherium, a huge rhinoceros-like mammal with six rounded horns, thrived.

First Cetaceans (ancestors of marine mammals)

The North Atlantic opens

Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM): At the North Pole, summer temperatures reached 23 degrees Celsius, and ocean levels were 70 meters higher than today. Plankton shells disappeared from the mud on the seafloor, which turned from white to red. During the PETM, a mass of carbon

Peak greenhouse effect: This is called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). A mass of carbon of as yet unknown origin, equivalent to the content of all present-day coal, oil, and gas deposits, invades the atmosphere; the temperature increases by an average of 5°C.

Deccan Traps Episode (Southern India): Massive series of eruptions in a short period of less than a million years, the episode occurs due to the outcrop of a mantle convective cell, which expels enough lava to cover the entire territory of the USA with a

KT + 5 minutes. The tsunami, with waves 300 meters high, reaches the coast. It will cover all of present-day Texas, reaching as far as Oklahoma.

KT + 115 seconds. The 35km-high water column from the Chicxulub meteorite triggers a tsunami with waves 300m high.

KT Episode. The Chicxulub meteorite impact causes 20-meter waves and an earthquake measuring 11-12 on the Richter scale.

KT Episode. Dinosaurs and 85% of species become extinct following a meteorite impact in Chicxulub, Yucatan (early Cenozoic Era); along with the dinosaurs, two-thirds of all living species on the planet become extinct; the 10km meteorite hits at 16km/s at a 30-degree angle toward the

According to Scientology doctrine, the galactic tyrant Xenu kidnaps hundreds of billions of people from other parts of the galaxy and sends them to Earth for extermination. They arrive in spaceships resembling DC-8 jets. They are exposed to thermonuclear explosions and brainwashed with a 36-day

First plants of the Fagaceae family (oaks, chestnuts, beeches, sessile oaks, oaks, cork oaks)

In the Pacific Rim (the ring of fire around the Pacific Ocean), most volcanoes erupt simultaneously; global warming and the resulting acid rain favor the spread of flowering plants (angiosperms).

The Escherichia coli bacterium originates from Salmonella. It is named after the German pediatrician Theodor Escherich. For example, Escherichia coli also lives in our intestines in colonies of one hundred billion individuals.

Confuciusornis, the second known bird species

First plants of the Pinaceae (pine) family

The oxygen level in the atmosphere drops to 21% (500 million years ago it was 31% which made any fire continuous)

The Monicougan meteorite fell in Quebec, Canada, creating a crater 95 km in diameter.

Oil fields are formed in North America

The Third Mass Extinction occurred at the end of the Permian, 251 million years ago, when 96% of species became extinct. The Second Extinction occurred during the Late Devonian, 375 million years ago, when 75% of living species became extinct. The First Extinction occurred 444

Gondwana joins with North America (part of Laurasia) and forms Pangea

First ferns (Pteridophytes)

Meteorite falls in Alamo, Nevada (160km crater) and another in Woodleigh, Western Australia (120km crater)

First trees on land: the oxygen content of the atmosphere increases rapidly from 21% to 40%.

First jawed fish (Placoderms)

First land animals larger than insects

The Earth’s year lasts 400 days due to the short length of the day; the discovery was made thanks to the 400 growth sub-rings of Devonian corals

Prototaxites, a colossal and mysterious life form that dominated terrestrial landscapes for millions of years, long before the advent of trees, thrive on land. From the Late Silurian to the Devonian, these gigantic structures, some reaching over 8 meters in height, formed the first “forests”

The massive spread of plants on land causes global CO2 levels to drop, drastically reducing the greenhouse effect and thus triggering a massive planetary glaciation (snowball) that freezes the megacontinent of Gondwana. Sea levels plummet. The marine ecosystem collapses. 85% of species become completely extinct.

The first jawless fish (Agnathan Ostracodermi). Fish gradually evolved, in the water, to develop various characteristics and behaviors that would later become typical of terrestrial animals: they were gregarious, even among different species; they developed a sense of hearing (experiments on various fish species have

The Earth’s axial tilt decreases from over 50 degrees to 25 degrees; the reason for the sudden drop may be due to the energy released by the resonance between the rotation period of the nucleus (with axis orthogonal to the ecliptic) and the crust (22

The Earth’s day is 22 hours long; the friction exerted by the tides against the continental shelf and the inertia employed by the Earth itself to change shape under the lunar attraction will cause the day to slowly lengthen and the Moon to recede accordingly

The first big fires begin (only things containing carbon can “burn” since the reaction C + O2 = CO2, so before life there were no big fires apart from lava fires); since the oxygen concentration is 30%, the fires are continuous, that is, everything that

In the shallow waters of Burgess, now British Columbia, Canada, a variety of small animals thrive: Marrella, Yohoia, Opabinia, Burgessia, Nectocaris, Odontogriphus, Dinomischus, Amiskwia, Hallucigenia, Branchiocaris, Canadaspis, Naraoia, Aysheaia, Odaraia, Sydneia, Molaria, Habelia, Sarotrocercus, Actaeus, Alalcomenaens, Emeraldella, Leanchoilia, Sanctacaris, Wilwaxia, Anomalicaris, Peytoia, Eldonia, Banffia, Portalia,

Thymmothian Period. The name derives from the proto-mollusk Tommotia. The climate is mild, and there are no glaciations. Much of North America was located at tropical and temperate latitudes, which allowed the growth of massive colonies of archaeocyathids in shallow waters. Siberia, also home to

First mollusks; they will soon diversify into gastropods (pointed shells), bivalves (two-part symmetrical shells) and cephalopods (ammonites, nautiluses, squid, octopus, cuttlefish)

The Ediacaran fauna (Australia) represents a completely distinct experiment in multicellular life, which will ultimately end with the Late Precambrian extinction. These are species that thrive on the seafloor, unrelated to any currently existing species. They are two-dimensional organisms, an alternative solution to the problem

possible “snowball earth” (Marinoan) event, a terrible ice age in which the oceans froze all the way to the tropics. Life likely survived in limited oases such as the Caribbean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Amazon, Central Africa, Indonesia, and

Stromatolites declined definitively; a modest recovery occurred only during the Cambrian-Ordovician transition. This decline is attributable to the appearance of the first grazing metazoans and fossa-forming organisms that biodisturbed the texture of the plates. In Italy, they are quite common in the Lower Cambrian formations

The supercontinent Rodinia (Greek for “Land of Dawn”) is formed, the next mega-grouping will be Pangea after another 520 million years.

The blood globin gene duplicates to form two distinct genes, one to make hemoglobin in vertebrates, and the other to make myoglobin, a protein that works in muscles.

Multicellular life on Earth. Many experiments, and then dinosaurs dominated the planet for a long time. Then came mammals (a sort of rethinking of nature after the dinosaurs), and finally humans (a freak of nature?).

The so-called Cambrian Outburst begins, a sudden enormous diversification of living species

Algae are spreading

According to a study published August 13, 2020, in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers have improved their estimate of the age of Earth’s solid inner core to between 1 and 1.3 billion years.

Eukaryotes (Eucharia) are born, initially unicellular, like amoebas, with a nucleus and various complex organelles