A heavy rain fell for a million years, pushing the dinosaurs to the throne of supremacy!
We often see articles with similar titles, including on organic websites.
Can a rain really last so long?
In fact, if we think about it carefully, we know how an area can continue to rain for a million years, rainfall will make the temperature drop, the result of the temperature drop is that the evaporation of water will decrease, and if the evaporation of water is reduced, it is obvious that there will be no way to continue rainfall.
When we talk about continuous rainfall for more than a million years and the evolution of dinosaurs, we often refer to the period when the "Kani rain set", or "Carny period flood event" (different authors have given different names, but I think it is more appropriate to call it "rain set"), which occurred about 234-232 million years ago, and many land areas became very rainy.
While this period cannot be a period of continuous rainfall, this "rainy season" of more than a million years is indeed a very interesting period in earth's history, and may not be called interesting, because many organisms went extinct during this period, and some paleontologists even tried to classify this period as another mass extinction event in addition to the five mass extinctions.
However, at the same time, the "modern" ecosystem also began to be officially born after the end of this period, and the vegetation and animals that we are familiar with now appeared after this.
So, what really happened during this period?
The discovery of the Carney period
Back in the 1980s, a young British geologist, Rafael, discovered some strange features of the rock layer in the Triassic period more than 200 million years ago, which can be seen that at some point the region suddenly went from hot drought to a wet stage.
Over time, more and more evidence of rock formations in more and more regions suggests that it rained almost everywhere on earth's land during this time.
Now, this period is known as the Kani period, and it is generally accepted that the Earth was rainy and wet during the Kani period, as almost all geologists have found signs of wet weather in the rock layers of that era.
Scientists are obviously more concerned about what happened during that period than during a rainy period.
For example, what causes some places to suddenly move from drought to humidity? What does this climate change bring to life?
Pangea, Source: Fama Clamosa
What causes the wet phase?
In the late Triassic period, the world looked completely different from today, and the continents we now separate from were connected at that time, known as the Pangea Continent.
Because Pangea is so huge, the humid air over the ocean is not enough to affect the inland areas of this "supercontinent", so a large area of land is in drought.
Research now suggests that Pangea formed about 335 million years ago and began to split 200 million years ago — that is, at the end of the Triassic period, 30 million years after the Carney period.
However, during the Kani period, geological activity has become a little active, so there are now two main points about the reasons for the humidity of the Carny period, both of which are about changes in geological activity.
Several of the largest igneous provinces, source: Williambor
One view is that volcanic activity became frequent during the Carni period and global warming caused the land to be wet.
A supporting factor for this view is that carbon dioxide levels do increase significantly during this period, and that the igneous province of Longoria (referring to large volcanic rocks, more than 10 km, formed by intense volcanic activity, often accompanied by significant climate change) is also similar in age to the Carney period.
So, it's possible that volcanic activity will cause global warming, and such things have happened often throughout Earth's history.
However, geologists have determined that the eruptions have a wide chronological error, making it difficult to determine whether the two occurred at the same time.
Another view is that the "Kani rain harvest" is a regional climate disturbance caused by orogeny.
Due to the uplift of the ground, a strong pressure gradient is formed between the ocean and the continent, resulting in a monsoon, while the summer monsoon is intercepted by the mountains to form rainfall, just as the Himalayas affect the climate today.
Obviously, proponents of this view do not see the "Carnid rain shower" as a global event, they believe that it occurred mainly in western Tethys, which is now the western part of the Mediterranean.
Of course, the "Carney rain set" is indeed not a recognized event, so let alone whether it has really been raining for 1 million years.
Regardless of what happened during the Carney period, it is true that earth's ecosystems changed drastically around this time period.
Caption: Dental stone
Effects of the Carney period on biology
First of all, there was indeed a large number of extinctions in the Carney period, but this period was not the fourth mass extinction, and the fourth mass extinction began 210 million years ago, more than 20 million years later than the Carney period.
Some researchers want to define this time period of mass extinction separately, but this view is still being rejected, while some researchers see the "Carney extinction event" as a small episode of the fourth mass extinction.
In any case, it is certain that many creatures have come to an end during this period.
During the Carney period, there were no flowers, no trees, no grasses, no birds, no mammals on land, and it was an ecosystem that we were very unfamiliar with.
On land, ecosystems were dominated by reptiles, including the earliest dinosaurs, and the land plants of this time were ferns and gymnosperms.
As the rain increased, the "steppe" became a forest, in which conifers expanded rapidly during this period, and although the grassland was deforested, the animals that fed on the plants under the forest could not adapt to this change, so they quickly became extinct.
Groups including tooth-shaped stones, ammonites, mosses and green algae all went extinct during this period, while groups such as dinosaurs and corals erupted during this time.
Dinosaurs, in particular, quickly went from small bipeds that lived only in parts of the country to world-wide giants in just 4 million years, and ruled the planet for the next 150 million years.
Many studies have now shown that the Carney period is inseparable from the evolution of dinosaurs, and it is indeed possible that this climate change eventually pushed dinosaurs to the throne of the earth's hegemony.
If you have seen the evolution of life on Earth, you will know that only the most adapted creatures have a chance to survive and expand.
At last
I was not particularly correct when I said earlier that it is impossible for an area to continue to rain, because I was standing on the premise that the evaporation of water depends on solar radiation, but if the Earth itself is very hot, the result is completely different.
In the early days of the formation of the Earth, the Earth at that time gradually cooled and could form rain, but it was still very hot to allow the water to evaporate rapidly, which provided conditions for continuous rainfall, so the entire Environment of the Earth at that time was in the midst of lightning and thunder, as well as continuous rainstorms.
This period may last for hundreds of years, or longer, until primordial oceans form and the Earth's surface cools down completely.
Now many people say that the "Carney period flood event" occurred during the period when the earth's surface has cooled, so it is impossible to continue to rain, it is only a stage of the earth's warmth and humidity.