I love the ediacaran fauna... it's so underrated. it feels like those were animals that for the most part aren't ancestors of the creatures we see today. only a few of them went on to evolve into the groups we see today. it's really like a lost world
Yeah it's always all for the Cambrian, but almost never the Ediacarian ! Well to be fair, we know a lot less about the Ediacarian so it's not surprising.
The tricky part of Ediacaran "animals" being ancestors to modern animals is not that we can't find Ediacarans that look like current animals. We can't even find *Cambrian* animals that look like Ediacarans.
@@RedRocket4000 The explanation, that I've heard, for that is that the starter animals were around in the Ediacaran era but they were so small we haven't found their fossils.
The thing is, evolution can result in vastly different results based on various pressures. Take chordates for example, the phylum that contains all animals with a backbone or vertibrates. It also contains sea squirts which, if you told me without some pretty strong evidence that they were more closely related to us than jellyfish and hydra, I would not believe you. Likely in the transition between ediacrine and Cambrian, there were massive selection pressures that forced life at that time to evolve into new forms at a rapid pace or die.
The naturalist David Attenborough grew up in this area. He was an avid fossil collector he never looked in this area for fossils as the prevailing theory was that the rocks were pre-Cambrian and so held no fossils. Thanks for all your hard work and great content.
For a moment I thought you wrote: "The naturalist David Attenborough grew up in this era. He was an avid fossil..." Then I reminded myself. "Ok, he's old. But not THAT old..."😂
Which is something I always found funny. Because Cambrian life already was pretty damn complex, so while there is the idea of the cambrian explodion, all the stuff had to develop in its basics first.
This, along with the sister channel, history of the universe are by far the most informative, beautifully written, researched and structured documentaries. This is phenomenal work - I hope that "History of..." team gets the recognition that is so deserved.
Agree, absolutely love the narration style the level of technical depth, visuals and the subtle sound track. Thanks for filling my life with such a powerful way of enlightenment.
Episode 28 and you're just now getting to the Cambrian. This is more detailed than any big-budget documentary I've ever seen. Truly staggering how much work you're putting in.
To be fair these videos are about 5% actual information and 95% poetry in incredibly slow narration about what this or that scientist had for breakfast on the day he discovered something.
@@zarlg Yes, that's what makes these vids great. A lazy 60 second tick tock can say "here's a pic of animals from the Cambrian." I'm on RUclips for the hour long deep dives into the details of what happened, how we know, why the discover was made, the context of the world when it was made, etc. etc. etc.
@@zarlgTrue, but the videos are still pretty cool. Gives you a lot of time to think about it philosophically too. Where did we come from, what was life back then etc
Thank you for not playing ridiculous overly dramatic music in these documentaries. The information is amazing enough, it doesn’t need to be made dramatic and tense, it can still be interesting.
Describing these as "a failed experiment" when they lasted at least a hundred million years seems a little unfair. Similarly the dinosaurs (as land animals, not birds) lasted just as long as mammals have existed and an asteroid could easily make a successors species state that we were a failed experiment.
At least one of the creatures has a direct descendant alive today so not a failed species there. It was a type of medusae that has a “rooted” phase as well as a swimming/floating phase.
If only Tina and Roger had found those peculiar stones sooner. They could have shown them to that Attenborough boy who was always down the marsh collecting newts. Young David had only left the school the year before.
I would choose the time one hundred thousand years after the dinosaur extinction event. Would explain what we have today and some earlier forms which didn't survive.
I did a story tangentially related to this. A group of researchers are on an expedition to research earlier humanity with a time machine; however, the machine is sabotaged and they're sent back to the late Jurassic Period with no way home. All they can do is try to survive. I unfortunately lost the google doc it was in alongside my old highschool account, but I think about it sometimes.
When the majority of early animals are evolved to consume bacterial mats, it's not odd that they don't fundamentally look like the animals that existed later, after those mats no longer were common.
This sort of material is why I STILL love RUclips. For all its faults it’s by far the best way to serendipitously learn fascinating material. Much like the joys of browsing an encyclopedia or a dictionary. You’re one of only a handful of channels I subscribe to, even after many years. Thank you so much for your efforts and achievements.
This is amazing. My master's thesis is on Ediacaran microbialites. It's so validating hearing such a high production channel talk about what I am researching.
Another potential classification of these 'proto-animals' might be the superorganisms we can see today in the form of Portuguese Man o' Wars and other siphonophores. They're 'creatures' made up of multiple micro-organisms that each fulfil a different role in the community, from capturing food to transporting nutrients around the body. Perhaps the parts that had the means of collecting food for the Ediacaran critters weren't preserved, or even permanently attached. Similarly, somewhat, they could be some of many other lifeforms that straddle the line between single-celled and multicellular, like bacterial colonies and slime molds. There's even types of amoeba that live most of their lives as independent individuals, reproducing asexually; except for when they all decide to form a clump that then grows itself upward into a tube shape that hardens out, like a plant or fungus; or when they encounter another individual with a similar but slightly different genetic makeup, at which point they start to rapidly sexually (kind of) reproduce while devouring all of their former(?) family members. Heck, you could even argue that _every_ macro-organism is a superorganism, since there isn't a single one around that doesn't rely on a ridiculously complex mini ecosystem of micro-organisms (and even some larger ones) to survive and metabolise their food for them. Even the mitochondrion (you know, the powerhouse of the cell) is technically speaking an _ancient_ hitch-hiker, with its own DNA and everything, and we literally couldn't do a thing without them.
If I wasn't currently in an insomniac haze, I'd go on and on about how much I love this comment. But for now, I'll simply share with you an incredibly beautiful paper that is very relevant to your comments. It's by Ole Peters and Alex Adamou, entitled, "the Ergodicity solution to the cooperation puzzle." Here is the abstract so you get an idea, I hope you enjoy it :) "When two entities cooperate by sharing resources, one relinquishes something of value to the other. This apparent altruism is frequently observed in nature. Why? Classical treatments assume circumstances where combining resources creates an immediate benefit, e.g. through complementarity or thresholds. Here we ask whether cooperation is predictable without such circumstances. We study a model in which resources self-multiply with fluctuations, a null model of a range of phenomena from viral spread to financial investment. Two fundamental growth rates exist: the ensemble-average growth rate, achieved by the average resources of a large population; and the time-average growth rate, achieved by individual resources over a long time. As a consequence of non-ergodicity, the latter is lower than the former by a term which depends on fluctuation size. Repeated pooling and sharing of resources reduces the effective size of fluctuations and increases the time-average growth rate, which approaches the ensemble-average growth rate in the many-cooperator limit. Therefore, cooperation is advantageous in our model for the simple reason that those who do it grow faster than those who do not. We offer this as a candidate explanation for observed cooperation in rudimentary environments, and as a behavioural baseline for cooperation more generally."
Or the mouth and digestive structures we're not seeing were one organism of a colony, and disconnected themselves from the rest when they could tell the other tissues were damaged or dying. Or the digestive structures carried bacteria-like symbionts inside them just like we do, that turned around and digested those parts so quickly after they died that they were already gone before these imprints formed. Or .. who knows what? Hopefully someone will find real evidence soon.
I can only speak for myself on this one, but like the proto-animals and siphoniphores, I am also a ‘creature’ made up of multiple micro-organisms that each fulfill a different role in the community (me, I am the community) from collecting food, to transporting nutrients around the body. I guess the only interesting thing about me is that some of my cells combine with some of other people’s cells and produce new microbial communities, and those communities will probably also be able to use the internet. I think about this a lot.
@@maseratidyce3587 same here, the blurry, squibbly lines we've decided to draw to separate areas of complex, interconnected systems are something I (we? sounds kinda self-absorbed) wonder about often. Why stop at 'a human is a sapient microecosystem' and not look further? Intentionality aside, our actions impact our environments as much as vice versa; perhaps it is worth occasionally considering the health of the greater organism you are a mobile sapient subunit of.
I'm reminded of the Maxis game SimEarth, in which a clade of life from the Ediacaran (the Trichordates) were included in the evolutionary tree because they'd died out on Earth and the developers felt sorry for them
Cell stage spore is very clearly Cambrian. None of these sea pen looking ediacaran creatures. You could probably replicate anomalocaris in cell stage and I know you can replicate opabinia within like 2 or 3 evolutions from the start of the game.
12:50 I hope Reginald eventually was recognized for his findings, and that his colleagues felt embarrassed after realizing they had missed something big. I can understand a journal like Nature being adverse to publishing something they must have considered a fringe theory at the time, but I’m sad he was so ignored about his findings by everyone.
@@cloverazar5315 He actually did become rich and later used the money to acquire a large piece of land, which he later transformed into a wilderness reserve.
It's crazy to think these could be our ancestors. The idea that these were animals so early in their evolution that they aren't recognisable compared to later animals, since they haven't evolved the structures and traits of more recent descendants is mind blowing.
I know right. Thinking of 600,000,000 years before present makes me laugh at myself. It's so unfathomable how long ago that was yet their shadows remain for us for us to observe. How unbelievably fascinating. I found fossils recently of plants in Japan which were laid down yesterday compared to ediacaran fossils. Incredible story of life on this planet.
“If a time machine could serve up to you your 200-million greats grandfather, you would eat him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon.” Richard Dawkins
@@goodman4093 - A tree could not. But trees were a much, much later evolutionary branch. In fact, that order of events is probably reversed as It seems probable that heterotrophs existed first, then autotrophs, which would eventually include your trees, evolved later.
Something I think should have been mentioned, when it comes to potential animal affinity there actually has been recent evidence looking at preserved cholesterols on Dickinsonia fossils that seem to be considered good evidence that it really is some kind of very primitive animal as opposed to a fungus or some other totally unrelated form of life. Additionally I think that Kimberella has a number of features that may potentially pin it as an extremely primitive mollusc, which would be exciting since it shows that animal life had already gone through some major radiations that would have laid down groups that exist to this day, maybe even including arthropods and Chordates!
is there such a thing as a "totally unrelated form of life"? anything that is, or was, alive on this planet bears some kind of relationship with every other organism now, or in the past. even a fungus is a closer than we think (or want to admit) relative
Love the origins for this discovery, just schoolchildren exploring the woods and then writing to a professor... It's like something from a story book, Famous Five or something like that!
The stories that he tells about the people who discovered this stuff is just as fantastical as the alien world's he describes. Great story telling IMO.
Thank you, so very much, for mentioning Tina & her amazing find; she is all too often (still) ignored. And, THANK YOU, for a video on my favorite subject, Ediacrian flora & fauna. This video, as with everyone the channel offers, is, simply, pure fucking excellence!
i feel SO BAD for the girl at the beginning.... she found it first but her teacher wouldn't listen. Then again, you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher that DOES listen, ever, in my experience lmao
Reginald Sprigg discovered the first of these creatures in Australia in 1946. The age is named after he Ediacara ranges here down under. It’s shameful that nobody remembers him and his discoveries were ignored. Mason gets the credit.
Incredible video! This series has sparked such a curiosity in me, I can't get enough. As a person with servere chronic depression, I have experienced a loss of passion and curiosity and to say I am grateful to be having so much fun learning about the history of the earth is an understatement. I am so grateful I live in such a time where so many minds have been able to ponder these questions over the centuries and we have so many answers and yet more mysteries to explore. You make things feel truly wondrous and it makes me feel so much more deeply connected to the planet and this life 💖 thank you!
I totally agree with you. Pete's natural story telling ability, and the connections he makes really transport your mind to a different space. I find these videos calming when I'm trying to deal with overwhelming stress/my PTSD. And, I love that I'm learning about the world at the same time. I share his channels often because they're something that's brought me so much peace and enjoyment. 🍀✌️😎
Isn't it wonderful when something like this can take us outside ourselves? Anhedonia is a difficult symptom to cope with, and I, too take great comfort in anything that can break through. Hope things improve for you. Bright blessings.
This is also how I get my brain to stop being so cruel to me. It is sometimes overwhelming (in a good way) when our beautiful planet breaks through the haze. It brings me so much peace to know that we are a blip in the timeline of earth, to look at all of the amazing things that came before us and to wonder about what will come after.
Imagine the first predator. Something mobile and carnivorous. It probably caused a mass extinction when it had zero competition and most creatures we’re basically fleshy plants.
Love love this channel, the thumbnails remind me of the books on fossils and dinosaurs I read as a kid but the videos are archival quality. My grandson loves dinosaurs, knows all their names, I can't wait to be able to share this channel with him.
Finally caught up with all episodes. After watching all of History of the Universe, I expected the same high quality, stunning images and perfect blend of fascinating science and beautiful storytelling. I wasn't disappointed. Both channels are exceptional and highly addictive. Thank you ❤️
Another great video. The production quality of your channels is just amazing. You and your staff should be very very proud of the work that you are doing.
By now I have this little game where I try to guess whether this or that video from both channels was written by Leila or some of other authors. I love writing in all of your videos, but the ones done by Leila have an especially poetic touch. Thank you! And thanks to the whole team for your dedication and unfalling quality!
Sometimes it is hard to tell apart the blurred lines between chemistry and biology; the difference between plants and animals. Another excellent episode. Bravo!
I was at primary school in the 80s and a geography teacher asked us if anyone could name any oceans or seas and I had a great obscure answer so put my hand up and replied Yellow Sea near China, the other kids laughed and the teacher rolled her eyes at me. That really pissed me off and I realised from that day some so called experts in their field are way less informed than you might believe.
Teachers aren’t hired for their knowledge on a subject, but on how well they can manage children. I was a teacher, and a lot of my colleagues were lacking in knowledge. Real experts get jobs in higher education.
The series might never be over! It’s a marathon not a sprint though and we all lead extremely busy lives. New vid coming very very soon. It’s a goodun!
I remember reading about the Ediacaran organisms in my parent's Scientific American when I was a kid in the '70s. It was absolutely fascinating to me then, and it's amazing how little is still known about them today. I have seen some claims that there is evidence that some Ediacaran species moved about and left tracks, but even that does not seem to be universally accepted... These creatures ruled the earth for 100 million years, and still such an enigma! Fascinating stuff, and a very well put together video.
I watched this the other day and realised I had forgotten about this channel after I watched the 1st video.. now I have the joy to binge watch the whole thing, what a treat, perfect writing!
It always hurts to hear of teacher like those at the beginning. They didn't just go check themselves to gain the knowledge of it the children lied or told the truth. They dare teach, but they care not to learn themselves
@TishaHayes yep. And it's one where even when you are as self conscious as I am. Constantly remembering my place and centering myself. I still occasionally will find myself being dismissive of claims or new ideas that have legit possibilities and have to go read. I also will find myself just accepting stuff without additional evidence simply because it came from a source I've used prior. And then I remember that Sci show can mess up . Like when they called azidoazide azide the most sensitive explosive every made and have done so repeatedly despite hundreds of papers and demonstratrations showing that no it's not.
This Narrator mispronounced the Flinders Range in Australia. He said "Finders" as in finding something! but it is Flinders - which (almost) rhymes with cinders.
Thank you for your efforts. I was admittedly hooked by the attractive title, however the presentation of information is clear and kept me intrigued throughout the video. I will be definitely be checking out other videos by your channel and related channels. In my opinion, you all are doing excellent work.
Just want to say as someone who's been pouring through scientific literature on the Ediacaran the past few years that I'm super impressed by the factual accuracy here. Most other youtube videos on the Ediacaran--even ones made by content creators who are really good for the most part--are full of errors and often present long-refuted hypotheses made before 1990 as modern paleontology. The ONLY serious criticisms I have regards the segment from about 44:06 to 44:50. Filter feeding isn't impossible in the absence of burrowing animals. It is likely that sufficient nutrition could be gained simply through marine snow (dead cells and biological waste of surface plankton) falling toward the seafloor, and that a thin layer of accumulated snow on the sea floor could be sufficiently disturbed by non-burrowing organisms grazing on it to churn it up back into the water column. On a related note, the fungal theory for Dickinsonia's evolution is not widely accepted, with most scientists believing it was either a basal animal or represents an extinct lineage which was more closely related to animals than to fungi. And only a few scientists believe that Dickinsonia spent its life 'pressed down into the mud'; evidence has grown over the past 5 years indicating that it could almost certainly move, albeit at an exceedingly slow pace, probably to travel to areas where marine snow had accumulated. In the grand scheme of things these still aren't major issues; your video is sooo much more accurate with respect to the Early-2020s understanding of the Ediacaran than Walking with Dinosaurs was with respect to the Late-1990s understanding of the Mesozoic. And WWD is literally the poster child of 'scientifically accurate paleontology documentaries' and concerns a much better understood era in Earth's history. So seriously, amazing work!!!
As someone born and raised in Charnwood (i am lucky to live literally next to a SSSI woodland, with outcrops of identical composition and origin to the classic pre-cambrian rocks thast Charnia Masoni was found in), a volunteer at Bradgate Park, an environmental science student and lover of all things in nature; The pockets of forest left in the Charnwood Forest are truely magical. I implore any locals to explore the area. If anyone would like some recommendations of named ancient woodland, feel free to ask in replies.
@@jkatttt1699 For some good outcrops, check out Bradgate Park (deer sanctuary and nature reserve on an old manor estate. My favourite place in the whole world), Outwoods nr Loughborough, Grace Dieu woods in Thringstone (there is also a 12th century abbey ruin to the north of the woodland, with a neolithic ritual stone in the field to the west of the abbey), Cademan Woods in Whitwick, and Beacon Hill. All stunning locations.
Given how many gaps there are in the fossil record, it's possible that the ancestors to animals lived in a place with poor conditions for fossilization, and we will never find them.
Amazing video, thanks!! One small correction: the chordates include more than just the vertebrates; tunicates are chordates but not vertebrates. They even have jellyfish-like creatures called salps!
@@chriscasperson5927 I'd love to go into detail on why that's a.. very _interesting_ way of looking at things to say the least, but quite unfortunately, RUclips isn't being too cooperative in letting my comment exist for anyone but me.
The reason Eridiacran creatures are so similar to leafs is physics. No matter how life evolves, there are most efficient forms based on physics. And life/evolution always lean towards physics efficiency.
I really enjoyed this. Very educational and as far as production quality goes, it beats the output of most of the broadcasters and also other RUclipsrs hands down. Much appreciated, thanks.
It's important to remember that only perhaps a fraction of a percent of all creatures end up as fossils. It's entirely possible we've just never found the ancestors of Animalia.
I'm always eager to learn about early animal life. Seeing the first developmental steps in the creation of our modern biological structures is truly insightful and challenges our perception on their limitations.
This is without a doubt the best documentary about the Ediacaran fauna that I've ever seen. It has become an automatic favorite and I shall watch it many times over. Thank you very much for this outstanding content and for your insightful explanations. Two thumbs up!
Why don’t adults listen to kids? They’re just as smart as we are, often more observant and not intellectually crippled by our adult paradigms. This reminds me of an anecdote where a truck had driven into and was wedged under an overpass too low for it by about an inch. Half a dozen men were standing around for ages scratching their heads about the problem, when an 8-year old boy suggested “why not let a little air out of the tires?” It worked, the truck was backed out easily, rerouted and the traffic jam was cleared. The men had been thinking about what kind of complicated equipment and procedures they needed, rather than seeing the best and simplest solution. (Sorry, I can’t properly credit this anecdote, I read it too long ago to remember the source but it’s a true story as far as I know).
Right up there with the best of the Beeb. The visuals are stunning, and the writer has the soul of a poet. Narration's not too shabby, either. Top job, folks.
Can't wait for the episode on the Cambrian Explosion. Also, Could these early animal-like creatures have helped clean those early sponge ancestors? Maybe even if it was a failed branch on the tree of life, it's not too hard to imagine at least a small amount of overlap.
I watch your videos nearly every day. Voices of the past, history of the universe, history of the earth...this channel is my favorite but they're all lovely. Thank you
Thank goodness for independent creators like this. In a world where the history and 'learning' channel failed us, the well researched disembodied accents of youtube rose to the occasion
All the focus around the start of animal life is inevitably on the Cambrian, but the pre-Cambrian period is super-interesting, and this video captured so well the mystery of ‘what happened before'
Two things pop in mind. First is the Cambrian explosion may have been set of by some of these creatures figuring out how to use mineralization to build solid structures. Such an event could easily be the kettle keg that set the explosion off. Second is non linear convergent evolution. Kind of like how so many distantly related crustaceans evolve into crabs. I like the sea pen comparison. It fits my incomplete and in adequate world view.
But what would have prompted the evolution of mineralization? I'm certain predation must have evolved first, and I'd hazard a guess that the Cambrian explosion was more likely caused by the evolution of the first predator, which in turn led to the evolution of mineralization. I'd also hazard a guess that the first ever predator was probably a free floating jellyfish.
Instead of "filtering" or going into the "bottom sediments" could Ediacaran have absorbed chemicals or minerals that were dissolved in the seas at that time?
I think that you would have to try to figure out what concentration of chemicals would have to be necessary and for how long to support some creature of that size.
Fascinating and really well done narrating ….. but the constant increase and decrease in volume and change of music in pauses of the narration was extremely uncomfortable to me
I met Reg Spriggs when he came to Flinders Uni once.... I am confident that he would have loved to have watched this and joined us in marvelling at the mystery that still surrounds the Ediacaran community.
All your videos are wonderful but I especially loved this one! You covered a lot that isn’t typically covered with ancient era videos. I loved learning about early scientists exploring the new fossils! 🎉
Most of evolution occurred at the subcellular level as biochemistry and genetics for billions of years. A new book published by Austin Macauley Publishers titled From Chemistry to Life on Earth outlines abiogenesis in great detail with a solution to the evolution of the genetic code and the ribosome as well as the cell in general using 290 references, 50 illustrations and several information tables with a proposed molecular natural selection formula with a worked example for ATP. The Ediacran occurred about 200 million years after the first protozoa evolved from single celled algae by a loss of photosynthesis genes and molecular machinery by getting adequate nutrition via predation. The Ediacran shows that the Cambrian explosion is a misnomer.
It needs to be said, that when you say they briefly ruled over the oceans, the ediacaran period lasted for 96 million years. Homo sapiens is younger than 300.000 years
This was, by far, the best doco on the Ediacaran fauna that I have seen - well balanced and sticking to the facts, not to mention beautifully produced. Thank you.
The dinosaurs were not a failed experiment but just had the bad luck to be terminated by an external event. Without that asteroid, they might have still been around today, possibly even bring forward an intelligent species like humans. That they had that potential can be seen in some of their surviving descendents, the corvids.
Nice to get some updated info on this period in Earth's history. My literal first exposure to the existence of these creatures was David Attenborough's *First Life,* a two-part miniseries from 2010. While the production of said miniseries edged a little more into "staged" territory than Attenborough's best efforts-with semi-scripted interviews with various scientists-it was nonetheless a well-done program and a rare example of a modern documentary that's worth watching. The "Pizza Discs" back then didn't have an official name yet and hadn't been reconsidered as possibly something other than a single bizarre lifeform, and that's a good example of what I mean by updated info.
I finally had time to watch this video, and it didn't disappoint! What I particularly appreciate about this video is that the writer spends so much time simply using the scientific method. Show us something unexplained. Observe it carefully. Glean as much as you can, then formulate hypotheses and subject those hypotheses to debate and scrutiny. And there's no shame in being wrong. Dr. Glaessner is not criticized for his work trying to ask a perfectly logical question and looking for evidence to support it. He's praised for his insight, even if ultimately, the evidence didn't support his thesis. That's how science works and how it progresses. There is no consensus. It's not an opinion survey. There's no technocrat in some government or university office deeming what is to be consider The Science(tm). It's just a constant, ongoing search for understanding, within the framework of humility that we may not fully understand a topic and thus, we're simply making our best guesses. It's the essence of what science is. As someone with plenty of training in the biological sciences, I truly appreciate how the writer shows how this process works in trying to understand what appear to be the first evidence of large-scale multicellular life. The biochemist in me wants to start talking about DNA, growth patterns, and tissue development as we see in embyronic development, since it appears to mimic those earliest stages of multicellular life, but that would be a much longer and more involved discussion for another forum. Anyway, excellent video!
Since fungi and animals have similar cellular metabolisms, and some people say that fungi branched off early on the path to animals, and some evidence exists for a pre-Ediacaran origin for fungi, then couldn't Ediacaran macro life be an early branch away from fungi and on their way to being modern animals?
Does anyone have a channel recommendation for another similar to this: history of life, soothing narration, longish videos? I use these to wind down before bed, and these are lovely, but I need more content 😩
I can recommend SEA, but he talks mainly about astrophysics and cosmology. Still, perfect for falling asleep to (and I don't mean this in a bad way, he has absolutely great videos)
I alwsys get impress how nature give us clues of ower own past , like the fosilisation proceses , its really amazing that nature give us all this things , frozen "pictures" of old creatures
I love the ediacaran fauna... it's so underrated. it feels like those were animals that for the most part aren't ancestors of the creatures we see today. only a few of them went on to evolve into the groups we see today. it's really like a lost world
Yeah it's always all for the Cambrian, but almost never the Ediacarian !
Well to be fair, we know a lot less about the Ediacarian so it's not surprising.
I had forgotten all about these!!
I feel like I need an Ediacaran t shirt ...
Yeah….I love the Cambrian animals, they are awesome….but the ediacaran fauna I have been finding more interesting in over the past decade or more….
@@MostlyPennyCat watched that so many times. Used to drift off to sleep with David Attenborough's soothing narration
@@MostlyPennyCat Huh. No, but I will look it up now.
Well not NOW now. After I've finished this video. :)
The tricky part of Ediacaran "animals" being ancestors to modern animals is not that we can't find Ediacarans that look like current animals. We can't even find *Cambrian* animals that look like Ediacarans.
nor can we find any starter animals for Cambrian animals that I seen of.
@@RedRocket4000 The explanation, that I've heard, for that is that the starter animals were around in the Ediacaran era but they were so small we haven't found their fossils.
The thing is, evolution can result in vastly different results based on various pressures. Take chordates for example, the phylum that contains all animals with a backbone or vertibrates. It also contains sea squirts which, if you told me without some pretty strong evidence that they were more closely related to us than jellyfish and hydra, I would not believe you.
Likely in the transition between ediacrine and Cambrian, there were massive selection pressures that forced life at that time to evolve into new forms at a rapid pace or die.
@@nobodyspecial2053 I suspect something figured out how to eat those handy pancake-critters lying on the sea bottom and things took off from there.
@@ComradeArthur And that initial something, like someone mentioned, were probably too small for fossils.
The naturalist David Attenborough grew up in this area. He was an avid fossil collector he never looked in this area for fossils as the prevailing theory was that the rocks were pre-Cambrian and so held no fossils. Thanks for all your hard work and great content.
For a moment I thought you wrote: "The naturalist David Attenborough grew up in this era. He was an avid fossil..."
Then I reminded myself. "Ok, he's old. But not THAT old..."😂
Indeed. He frequented Bradgate Park, which was where he found his passion for narture
I believe he discusses that in The Origins of Life.
@@falkjanen5050Well, to be fair, it would have at least said he was an _avid_ fossil, implying David managed to be spry for his timeless age.
Which is something I always found funny. Because Cambrian life already was pretty damn complex, so while there is the idea of the cambrian explodion, all the stuff had to develop in its basics first.
This, along with the sister channel, history of the universe are by far the most informative, beautifully written, researched and structured documentaries. This is phenomenal work - I hope that "History of..." team gets the recognition that is so deserved.
Agree, absolutely love the narration style the level of technical depth, visuals and the subtle sound track. Thanks for filling my life with such a powerful way of enlightenment.
Very mcuh agree with that assessment!
I love the narration, everything about this channel and history of the universe is phenomenal. Keep up the good work.
Agreed!
saaaaaataaaaan!!!!! ban sience!!!!
Episode 28 and you're just now getting to the Cambrian. This is more detailed than any big-budget documentary I've ever seen. Truly staggering how much work you're putting in.
To be fair these videos are about 5% actual information and 95% poetry in incredibly slow narration about what this or that scientist had for breakfast on the day he discovered something.
@@zarlg Yes, that's what makes these vids great. A lazy 60 second tick tock can say "here's a pic of animals from the Cambrian." I'm on RUclips for the hour long deep dives into the details of what happened, how we know, why the discover was made, the context of the world when it was made, etc. etc. etc.
@@zarlg all your comments are just mad about a docuseries on youtube lole
@@zarlgTrue, but the videos are still pretty cool. Gives you a lot of time to think about it philosophically too. Where did we come from, what was life back then etc
Thank you for not playing ridiculous overly dramatic music in these documentaries. The information is amazing enough, it doesn’t need to be made dramatic and tense, it can still be interesting.
this was still too loud & annoying.
Describing these as "a failed experiment" when they lasted at least a hundred million years seems a little unfair. Similarly the dinosaurs (as land animals, not birds) lasted just as long as mammals have existed and an asteroid could easily make a successors species state that we were a failed experiment.
WW3 is too darned close.
At least one of the creatures has a direct descendant alive today so not a failed species there. It was a type of medusae that has a “rooted” phase as well as a swimming/floating phase.
@@casteretpollux we can only hope so.
If we go extinct then yes, we will have also been a failure
@@baconcheesezombie Homo sapiens have been around for 100,000 years not 100 million years, so yes
If only Tina and Roger had found those peculiar stones sooner. They could have shown them to that Attenborough boy who was always down the marsh collecting newts. Young David had only left the school the year before.
Well his brother Richard made a mutant dinosaur park back in the 90's
"No more similar to a jelly fish, than an abandoned omelet." I'm dead. 🤣
You got fossilized 🗿
I came looking for this comment and was not disappointed.
Who abandons an omelet??
You don’t post a lot of videos but everything you release is a masterpiece.
came here 2 say this- quality ovr quantity!
i so look forward 2 ur videos- keep up the incredible work m8!!!
And you make them available on RUclips for free. 👍
Quality > quantity, friend. Raise the bar from the average, phoned in reaction videos or reality TV.
These guys have 5 channels to run hence the posting quantity
@@Hulivilivoo no no no.
Being a biologist with a time machine would be one of the single greatest jobs in the history of ever.
Feel like a time machine would improve any profession tbh
@@h3069 historians would demand first dibs
paradoxes, not even once
I would choose the time one hundred thousand years after the dinosaur extinction event. Would explain what we have today and some earlier forms which didn't survive.
I did a story tangentially related to this. A group of researchers are on an expedition to research earlier humanity with a time machine; however, the machine is sabotaged and they're sent back to the late Jurassic Period with no way home. All they can do is try to survive.
I unfortunately lost the google doc it was in alongside my old highschool account, but I think about it sometimes.
When the majority of early animals are evolved to consume bacterial mats, it's not odd that they don't fundamentally look like the animals that existed later, after those mats no longer were common.
Very good point.
True
+point
This sort of material is why I STILL love RUclips. For all its faults it’s by far the best way to serendipitously learn fascinating material. Much like the joys of browsing an encyclopedia or a dictionary. You’re one of only a handful of channels I subscribe to, even after many years. Thank you so much for your efforts and achievements.
This is amazing. My master's thesis is on Ediacaran microbialites. It's so validating hearing such a high production channel talk about what I am researching.
Is your paper available to read?
Have larvae of Ediacarians been identified ? Small swimming creatures or just floating creatures, crawling ?
Another potential classification of these 'proto-animals' might be the superorganisms we can see today in the form of Portuguese Man o' Wars and other siphonophores. They're 'creatures' made up of multiple micro-organisms that each fulfil a different role in the community, from capturing food to transporting nutrients around the body. Perhaps the parts that had the means of collecting food for the Ediacaran critters weren't preserved, or even permanently attached.
Similarly, somewhat, they could be some of many other lifeforms that straddle the line between single-celled and multicellular, like bacterial colonies and slime molds. There's even types of amoeba that live most of their lives as independent individuals, reproducing asexually; except for when they all decide to form a clump that then grows itself upward into a tube shape that hardens out, like a plant or fungus; or when they encounter another individual with a similar but slightly different genetic makeup, at which point they start to rapidly sexually (kind of) reproduce while devouring all of their former(?) family members.
Heck, you could even argue that _every_ macro-organism is a superorganism, since there isn't a single one around that doesn't rely on a ridiculously complex mini ecosystem of micro-organisms (and even some larger ones) to survive and metabolise their food for them. Even the mitochondrion (you know, the powerhouse of the cell) is technically speaking an _ancient_ hitch-hiker, with its own DNA and everything, and we literally couldn't do a thing without them.
If I wasn't currently in an insomniac haze, I'd go on and on about how much I love this comment.
But for now, I'll simply share with you an incredibly beautiful paper that is very relevant to your comments. It's by Ole Peters and Alex Adamou, entitled, "the Ergodicity solution to the cooperation puzzle." Here is the abstract so you get an idea, I hope you enjoy it :)
"When two entities cooperate by sharing resources, one relinquishes something of value to the other. This apparent altruism is frequently observed in nature. Why? Classical treatments assume circumstances where combining resources creates an immediate benefit, e.g. through complementarity or thresholds. Here we ask whether cooperation is predictable without such circumstances. We study a model in which resources self-multiply with fluctuations, a null model of a range of phenomena from viral spread to financial investment. Two fundamental growth rates exist: the ensemble-average growth rate, achieved by the average resources of a large population; and the time-average growth rate, achieved by individual resources over a long time. As a consequence of non-ergodicity, the latter is lower than the former by a term which depends on fluctuation size. Repeated pooling and sharing of resources reduces the effective size of fluctuations and increases the time-average growth rate, which approaches the ensemble-average growth rate in the many-cooperator limit. Therefore, cooperation is advantageous in our model for the simple reason that those who do it grow faster than those who do not. We offer this as a candidate explanation for observed cooperation in rudimentary environments, and as a behavioural baseline for cooperation more generally."
This comment deserves more 👍
Or the mouth and digestive structures we're not seeing were one organism of a colony, and disconnected themselves from the rest when they could tell the other tissues were damaged or dying. Or the digestive structures carried bacteria-like symbionts inside them just like we do, that turned around and digested those parts so quickly after they died that they were already gone before these imprints formed. Or .. who knows what? Hopefully someone will find real evidence soon.
I can only speak for myself on this one, but like the proto-animals and siphoniphores, I am also a ‘creature’ made up of multiple micro-organisms that each fulfill a different role in the community (me, I am the community) from collecting food, to transporting nutrients around the body. I guess the only interesting thing about me is that some of my cells combine with some of other people’s cells and produce new microbial communities, and those communities will probably also be able to use the internet. I think about this a lot.
@@maseratidyce3587 same here, the blurry, squibbly lines we've decided to draw to separate areas of complex, interconnected systems are something I (we? sounds kinda self-absorbed) wonder about often.
Why stop at 'a human is a sapient microecosystem' and not look further? Intentionality aside, our actions impact our environments as much as vice versa; perhaps it is worth occasionally considering the health of the greater organism you are a mobile sapient subunit of.
This channel is a true gem. Actual high value science productions on youtube. No junk segments, no filler. Thank you for doing this.
I'm reminded of the Maxis game SimEarth, in which a clade of life from the Ediacaran (the Trichordates) were included in the evolutionary tree because they'd died out on Earth and the developers felt sorry for them
Do you remember spore?
So there's hope for us all.
Cell stage spore is very clearly Cambrian. None of these sea pen looking ediacaran creatures. You could probably replicate anomalocaris in cell stage and I know you can replicate opabinia within like 2 or 3 evolutions from the start of the game.
12:50 I hope Reginald eventually was recognized for his findings, and that his colleagues felt embarrassed after realizing they had missed something big. I can understand a journal like Nature being adverse to publishing something they must have considered a fringe theory at the time, but I’m sad he was so ignored about his findings by everyone.
He was recognised, a whole period is named after the name he had given to his fossils.
He also got an ediacran fossil named after him.
I hope he made a proper whack of cash finding oil, too. That’d be lovely. Stupid rich AND vindicated?
@@cloverazar5315 He actually did become rich and later used the money to acquire a large piece of land, which he later transformed into a wilderness reserve.
Problem was his wish to include his findings with the Cambrian era which was promptly rejected.
It's crazy to think these could be our ancestors. The idea that these were animals so early in their evolution that they aren't recognisable compared to later animals, since they haven't evolved the structures and traits of more recent descendants is mind blowing.
I know right. Thinking of 600,000,000 years before present makes me laugh at myself. It's so unfathomable how long ago that was yet their shadows remain for us for us to observe. How unbelievably fascinating. I found fossils recently of plants in Japan which were laid down yesterday compared to ediacaran fossils. Incredible story of life on this planet.
How could tree be your ancestor?
@@goodman4093 Is this an honest question or trollbait? Nobody here said trees were direct ancestors.
“If a time machine could serve up to you your 200-million greats grandfather, you would eat him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon.”
Richard Dawkins
@@goodman4093 - A tree could not. But trees were a much, much later evolutionary branch. In fact, that order of events is probably reversed as It seems probable that heterotrophs existed first, then autotrophs, which would eventually include your trees, evolved later.
Something I think should have been mentioned, when it comes to potential animal affinity there actually has been recent evidence looking at preserved cholesterols on Dickinsonia fossils that seem to be considered good evidence that it really is some kind of very primitive animal as opposed to a fungus or some other totally unrelated form of life.
Additionally I think that Kimberella has a number of features that may potentially pin it as an extremely primitive mollusc, which would be exciting since it shows that animal life had already gone through some major radiations that would have laid down groups that exist to this day, maybe even including arthropods and Chordates!
I remember PBS eons did a video about Dickinsonia. Very interesting.
is there such a thing as a "totally unrelated form of life"?
anything that is, or was, alive on this planet bears some kind of relationship
with every other organism now, or in the past.
even a fungus is a closer than we think (or want to admit) relative
Punctuation will make your writing easier to read.
Love the origins for this discovery, just schoolchildren exploring the woods and then writing to a professor... It's like something from a story book, Famous Five or something like that!
yes! - discovered by one of the five just as they were leaving in a rush to be home 'in time for tea'...
The stories that he tells about the people who discovered this stuff is just as fantastical as the alien world's he describes. Great story telling IMO.
Thank you, so very much, for mentioning Tina & her amazing find; she is all too often (still) ignored. And, THANK YOU, for a video on my favorite subject, Ediacrian flora & fauna. This video, as with everyone the channel offers, is, simply, pure fucking excellence!
i feel SO BAD for the girl at the beginning.... she found it first but her teacher wouldn't listen. Then again, you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher that DOES listen, ever, in my experience lmao
Just tell your teacher that your a man who feels like identifying as a woman and you will have their undivided attention 😢
@@ObjectiveEthics wow that's so funny! i'm honored you commented, i've never met a professional clown before!
@@moosekababs Glad you approve. Stick around kid, the jokes on you and they only get better.
⁸88>8⁸
Reginald Sprigg discovered the first of these creatures in Australia in 1946. The age is named after he Ediacara ranges here down under. It’s shameful that nobody remembers him and his discoveries were ignored. Mason gets the credit.
Incredible video! This series has sparked such a curiosity in me, I can't get enough. As a person with servere chronic depression, I have experienced a loss of passion and curiosity and to say I am grateful to be having so much fun learning about the history of the earth is an understatement. I am so grateful I live in such a time where so many minds have been able to ponder these questions over the centuries and we have so many answers and yet more mysteries to explore. You make things feel truly wondrous and it makes me feel so much more deeply connected to the planet and this life 💖 thank you!
I totally agree with you. Pete's natural story telling ability, and the connections he makes really transport your mind to a different space. I find these videos calming when I'm trying to deal with overwhelming stress/my PTSD. And, I love that I'm learning about the world at the same time.
I share his channels often because they're something that's brought me so much peace and enjoyment. 🍀✌️😎
Isn't it wonderful when something like this can take us outside ourselves? Anhedonia is a difficult symptom to cope with, and I, too take great comfort in anything that can break through. Hope things improve for you. Bright blessings.
I'm happy for you that this channel gives you some joy. And I hope you'll find other possibilities to cope with the depression.
My Depression is Hormones, go to an Endocrinologist and a Dietician
This is also how I get my brain to stop being so cruel to me. It is sometimes overwhelming (in a good way) when our beautiful planet breaks through the haze. It brings me so much peace to know that we are a blip in the timeline of earth, to look at all of the amazing things that came before us and to wonder about what will come after.
I can't express how thankful I am for these documentaries. Thanks again
I love these NOT goofy narrations. Most of Science channels today have goofy narrations with annoyingly corny spills.
Absofuckinglutely. This feels like an honest-to-god documentary
though the music here was unnecesarilly loud.
@@DanteLikesRocki feel like it goes up and down in volume it's weird but i don't mind it
@@schnoz2372 normally that's fine, but if im trying to fall asleep and it becomes loud all of a sudden, it gets annoying .
All the channels the Kelly brothers own are equally phenomenal. They are truly gems on RUclips.
Imagine the first predator. Something mobile and carnivorous. It probably caused a mass extinction when it had zero competition and most creatures we’re basically fleshy plants.
It would have been a garden of Eden until it wasn’t.
I wonder how many periods were like this.
that actually happens even today, we, humans, are that predator🥴
Except we still are incredibly weak to the threats of nature. We're only "apexes" when a destructive contraption is at hand. @@ssenyl
Yep
Love love this channel, the thumbnails remind me of the books on fossils and dinosaurs I read as a kid but the videos are archival quality. My grandson loves dinosaurs, knows all their names, I can't wait to be able to share this channel with him.
Finally caught up with all episodes. After watching all of History of the Universe, I expected the same high quality, stunning images and perfect blend of fascinating science and beautiful storytelling. I wasn't disappointed. Both channels are exceptional and highly addictive. Thank you ❤️
Another great video. The production quality of your channels is just amazing. You and your staff should be very very proud of the work that you are doing.
By now I have this little game where I try to guess whether this or that video from both channels was written by Leila or some of other authors. I love writing in all of your videos, but the ones done by Leila have an especially poetic touch. Thank you!
And thanks to the whole team for your dedication and unfalling quality!
Sometimes it is hard to tell apart the blurred lines between chemistry and biology; the difference between plants and animals. Another excellent episode. Bravo!
I was at primary school in the 80s and a geography teacher asked us if anyone could name any oceans or seas and I had a great obscure answer so put my hand up and replied Yellow Sea near China, the other kids laughed and the teacher rolled her eyes at me. That really pissed me off and I realised from that day some so called experts in their field are way less informed than you might believe.
She didn't know the yellow sea!? Damn
@midnightfairycase2145 no idea if you are trolling but I'll take it 👊
Teachers aren’t hired for their knowledge on a subject, but on how well they can manage children. I was a teacher, and a lot of my colleagues were lacking in knowledge. Real experts get jobs in higher education.
@@lethallizard963 it was a life lesson that was valuable even though I didn't realise it at the time.
She thought you were making a pee joke probably
This is one of the first episodes that I had virtually no prior knowledge of! Thanks for making these videos with such care!
Thank you Leila and CO! There were quite a few little aspects of the history of the Ediacaran fossils I wasn't aware of. Great episode!
I noticed this has been 5 months which is a long time between videos. Longer than others. I hope this series isn't over.
The series might never be over! It’s a marathon not a sprint though and we all lead extremely busy lives. New vid coming very very soon. It’s a goodun!
The descriptive prose in this script is just beautiful.
Fascinating video. It would be incredible to be able to travel back in time and observe the Ediacaran period like a fly on the wall.
Only flies hadn't evolved yet..😆🤪
I remember reading about the Ediacaran organisms in my parent's Scientific American when I was a kid in the '70s. It was absolutely fascinating to me then, and it's amazing how little is still known about them today. I have seen some claims that there is evidence that some Ediacaran species moved about and left tracks, but even that does not seem to be universally accepted... These creatures ruled the earth for 100 million years, and still such an enigma! Fascinating stuff, and a very well put together video.
I watched this the other day and realised I had forgotten about this channel after I watched the 1st video.. now I have the joy to binge watch the whole thing, what a treat, perfect writing!
My favorite era, it's so fascinating looking back and see these early forms of life.
Love watching “The Entire History of the Earth”! Thank you for a great series that uncovers so many discoveries of life on Earth.
It always hurts to hear of teacher like those at the beginning. They didn't just go check themselves to gain the knowledge of it the children lied or told the truth. They dare teach, but they care not to learn themselves
Good point confirming the lie would be a good idea especially as it so crazy it has to have a source of something even if it modern in type.
Unfortunately that is a human tendency that is more universal than a stand-out exception.
@TishaHayes yep. And it's one where even when you are as self conscious as I am. Constantly remembering my place and centering myself. I still occasionally will find myself being dismissive of claims or new ideas that have legit possibilities and have to go read. I also will find myself just accepting stuff without additional evidence simply because it came from a source I've used prior. And then I remember that Sci show can mess up . Like when they called azidoazide azide the most sensitive explosive every made and have done so repeatedly despite hundreds of papers and demonstratrations showing that no it's not.
The desire to taste-test the Ediacaran fauna is particularly strong for me. Who knows what delicacies were lost to time~
This Narrator mispronounced the Flinders Range in Australia. He said "Finders" as in finding something! but it is Flinders - which (almost) rhymes with cinders.
Thank you for your efforts. I was admittedly hooked by the attractive title, however the presentation of information is clear and kept me intrigued throughout the video. I will be definitely be checking out other videos by your channel and related channels. In my opinion, you all are doing excellent work.
Just want to say as someone who's been pouring through scientific literature on the Ediacaran the past few years that I'm super impressed by the factual accuracy here. Most other youtube videos on the Ediacaran--even ones made by content creators who are really good for the most part--are full of errors and often present long-refuted hypotheses made before 1990 as modern paleontology.
The ONLY serious criticisms I have regards the segment from about 44:06 to 44:50.
Filter feeding isn't impossible in the absence of burrowing animals. It is likely that sufficient nutrition could be gained simply through marine snow (dead cells and biological waste of surface plankton) falling toward the seafloor, and that a thin layer of accumulated snow on the sea floor could be sufficiently disturbed by non-burrowing organisms grazing on it to churn it up back into the water column.
On a related note, the fungal theory for Dickinsonia's evolution is not widely accepted, with most scientists believing it was either a basal animal or represents an extinct lineage which was more closely related to animals than to fungi. And only a few scientists believe that Dickinsonia spent its life 'pressed down into the mud'; evidence has grown over the past 5 years indicating that it could almost certainly move, albeit at an exceedingly slow pace, probably to travel to areas where marine snow had accumulated.
In the grand scheme of things these still aren't major issues; your video is sooo much more accurate with respect to the Early-2020s understanding of the Ediacaran than Walking with Dinosaurs was with respect to the Late-1990s understanding of the Mesozoic. And WWD is literally the poster child of 'scientifically accurate paleontology documentaries' and concerns a much better understood era in Earth's history. So seriously, amazing work!!!
The Title 'Garden of Ediacara' is VERY CLEVER. LOVE these videos folks!🐋🐋🐋
As someone born and raised in Charnwood (i am lucky to live literally next to a SSSI woodland, with outcrops of identical composition and origin to the classic pre-cambrian rocks thast Charnia Masoni was found in), a volunteer at Bradgate Park, an environmental science student and lover of all things in nature; The pockets of forest left in the Charnwood Forest are truely magical. I implore any locals to explore the area. If anyone would like some recommendations of named ancient woodland, feel free to ask in replies.
I'm asking!
@@jkatttt1699 For some good outcrops, check out Bradgate Park (deer sanctuary and nature reserve on an old manor estate. My favourite place in the whole world), Outwoods nr Loughborough, Grace Dieu woods in Thringstone (there is also a 12th century abbey ruin to the north of the woodland, with a neolithic ritual stone in the field to the west of the abbey), Cademan Woods in Whitwick, and Beacon Hill. All stunning locations.
@@MotoHikes New areas for walkabouts now added to my list. Thanks so much, and Happy Christmas!
@@MotoHikes beacon hill during the fireworks on bonfire night is great. 👌
@@bjdefilippo447 Enjoy! Leicestershire is really overlooked when it comes to places of natural beauty in the UK. Merry Christmas!
Given how many gaps there are in the fossil record, it's possible that the ancestors to animals lived in a place with poor conditions for fossilization, and we will never find them.
Amazing video, thanks!!
One small correction: the chordates include more than just the vertebrates; tunicates are chordates but not vertebrates. They even have jellyfish-like creatures called salps!
..There is so much wrong with claiming that dinosaurs were "a failed experiment at giant lizardhood that ultimately gave rise to birds".
care to elaborate?
Non-avian dinosaurs died and avian theropods still exist today. Yep, non-avian dinosaurs failed.
@@chriscasperson5927 I'd love to go into detail on why that's a.. very _interesting_ way of looking at things to say the least, but quite unfortunately, RUclips isn't being too cooperative in letting my comment exist for anyone but me.
The reason Eridiacran creatures are so similar to leafs is physics.
No matter how life evolves, there are most efficient forms based on physics.
And life/evolution always lean towards physics efficiency.
today is a good day
When the Precambrian Phaeophyta didnt have to use his AK
Glad to see this series still going strong:) Great stuff!
I really enjoyed this. Very educational and as far as production quality goes, it beats the output of most of the broadcasters and also other RUclipsrs hands down.
Much appreciated, thanks.
It's important to remember that only perhaps a fraction of a percent of all creatures end up as fossils. It's entirely possible we've just never found the ancestors of Animalia.
I'm always eager to learn about early animal life. Seeing the first developmental steps in the creation of our modern biological structures is truly insightful and challenges our perception on their limitations.
This is without a doubt the best documentary about the Ediacaran fauna that I've ever seen. It has become an automatic favorite and I shall watch it many times over. Thank you very much for this outstanding content and for your insightful explanations. Two thumbs up!
Imagine if trilateral Ediacarans with gliding symmetry became the dominant creatures living today, it would be a different and bizarre world.
Informal cabbage sounds like a creative insult.
Every video that you've produced in this series has been superb, but this one is simply astounding.
I don't think nature is doing experiments. I think nature is just a perfectionist with many variables. [I'm not the greatest wordsmith]
Why don’t adults listen to kids? They’re just as smart as we are, often more observant and not intellectually crippled by our adult paradigms. This reminds me of an anecdote where a truck had driven into and was wedged under an overpass too low for it by about an inch. Half a dozen men were standing around for ages scratching their heads about the problem, when an 8-year old boy suggested “why not let a little air out of the tires?” It worked, the truck was backed out easily, rerouted and the traffic jam was cleared. The men had been thinking about what kind of complicated equipment and procedures they needed, rather than seeing the best and simplest solution. (Sorry, I can’t properly credit this anecdote, I read it too long ago to remember the source but it’s a true story as far as I know).
Right up there with the best of the Beeb. The visuals are stunning, and the writer has the soul of a poet. Narration's not too shabby, either. Top job, folks.
Can't wait for the episode on the Cambrian Explosion.
Also, Could these early animal-like creatures have helped clean those early sponge ancestors? Maybe even if it was a failed branch on the tree of life, it's not too hard to imagine at least a small amount of overlap.
Talking about history is one thing ! Making it a story is that you don't want to end is something else altogether ! Thank you all for your hard work !
When this series is finished, would you be able to release the soundtrack? I really like the music that is used.
I watch your videos nearly every day. Voices of the past, history of the universe, history of the earth...this channel is my favorite but they're all lovely. Thank you
Thank goodness for independent creators like this. In a world where the history and 'learning' channel failed us, the well researched disembodied accents of youtube rose to the occasion
All the focus around the start of animal life is inevitably on the Cambrian, but the pre-Cambrian period is super-interesting, and this video captured so well the mystery of ‘what happened before'
Two things pop in mind. First is the Cambrian explosion may have been set of by some of these creatures figuring out how to use mineralization to build solid structures. Such an event could easily be the kettle keg that set the explosion off. Second is non linear convergent evolution. Kind of like how so many distantly related crustaceans evolve into crabs. I like the sea pen comparison. It fits my incomplete and in adequate world view.
But what would have prompted the evolution of mineralization?
I'm certain predation must have evolved first, and I'd hazard a guess that the Cambrian explosion was more likely caused by the evolution of the first predator, which in turn led to the evolution of mineralization. I'd also hazard a guess that the first ever predator was probably a free floating jellyfish.
The cambrian explosion happened BECAUSE of the ediacran extinction.
Their erradication left space for animals and plants to evolve.
Instead of "filtering" or going into the "bottom sediments" could Ediacaran have absorbed chemicals or minerals that were dissolved in the seas at that time?
I think that you would have to try to figure out what concentration of chemicals would have to be necessary and for how long to support some creature of that size.
Your work is beyond network quality. You leave NOVA - PBS and the Koch bros in the dust. MIND BLOWN.
Fascinating and really well done narrating ….. but the constant increase and decrease in volume and change of music in pauses of the narration was extremely uncomfortable to me
I met Reg Spriggs when he came to Flinders Uni once.... I am confident that he would have loved to have watched this and joined us in marvelling at the mystery that still surrounds the Ediacaran community.
All your videos are wonderful but I especially loved this one! You covered a lot that isn’t typically covered with ancient era videos. I loved learning about early scientists exploring the new fossils! 🎉
Most of evolution occurred at the subcellular level as biochemistry and genetics for billions of years.
A new book published by Austin Macauley Publishers titled From Chemistry to Life on Earth outlines abiogenesis in great detail with a solution to the evolution of the genetic code and the ribosome as well as the cell in general using 290 references, 50 illustrations and several information tables with a proposed molecular natural selection formula with a worked example for ATP.
The Ediacran occurred about 200 million years after the first protozoa evolved from single celled algae by a loss of photosynthesis genes and molecular machinery by getting adequate nutrition via predation. The Ediacran shows that the Cambrian explosion is a misnomer.
It needs to be said, that when you say they briefly ruled over the oceans, the ediacaran period lasted for 96 million years.
Homo sapiens is younger than 300.000 years
I think there's some genetic evidence now that sponges are secondarily not symmetrical. They may have descended from ancestors that were.
I love your documentaries. Thank you for another amazing adventure into the past!
This was, by far, the best doco on the Ediacaran fauna that I have seen - well balanced and sticking to the facts, not to mention beautifully produced. Thank you.
The dinosaurs were not a failed experiment but just had the bad luck to be terminated by an external event. Without that asteroid, they might have still been around today, possibly even bring forward an intelligent species like humans. That they had that potential can be seen in some of their surviving descendents, the corvids.
Those ediacaran animals really got away with some janky strats before predation became a thing
Fr
Nice to get some updated info on this period in Earth's history. My literal first exposure to the existence of these creatures was David Attenborough's *First Life,* a two-part miniseries from 2010. While the production of said miniseries edged a little more into "staged" territory than Attenborough's best efforts-with semi-scripted interviews with various scientists-it was nonetheless a well-done program and a rare example of a modern documentary that's worth watching. The "Pizza Discs" back then didn't have an official name yet and hadn't been reconsidered as possibly something other than a single bizarre lifeform, and that's a good example of what I mean by updated info.
I finally had time to watch this video, and it didn't disappoint! What I particularly appreciate about this video is that the writer spends so much time simply using the scientific method. Show us something unexplained. Observe it carefully. Glean as much as you can, then formulate hypotheses and subject those hypotheses to debate and scrutiny. And there's no shame in being wrong. Dr. Glaessner is not criticized for his work trying to ask a perfectly logical question and looking for evidence to support it. He's praised for his insight, even if ultimately, the evidence didn't support his thesis. That's how science works and how it progresses. There is no consensus. It's not an opinion survey. There's no technocrat in some government or university office deeming what is to be consider The Science(tm). It's just a constant, ongoing search for understanding, within the framework of humility that we may not fully understand a topic and thus, we're simply making our best guesses. It's the essence of what science is. As someone with plenty of training in the biological sciences, I truly appreciate how the writer shows how this process works in trying to understand what appear to be the first evidence of large-scale multicellular life. The biochemist in me wants to start talking about DNA, growth patterns, and tissue development as we see in embyronic development, since it appears to mimic those earliest stages of multicellular life, but that would be a much longer and more involved discussion for another forum.
Anyway, excellent video!
Reading that thumbnail "Life's Failed Experiment?" I was afraid for a minute that someone had made a movie about me and my first wife. Whew!
Calling dinosaurs a failed path of evolution is certainly bold.
Oh….I’ve been waiting for this one since the series started…..grabbing my coffee…..
You just gotta love teachers that think all their students are dumb idiots. They really picked the right job.
Since fungi and animals have similar cellular metabolisms, and some people say that fungi branched off early on the path to animals, and some evidence exists for a pre-Ediacaran origin for fungi, then couldn't Ediacaran macro life be an early branch away from fungi and on their way to being modern animals?
You could write a doctoral on that
Does anyone have a channel recommendation for another similar to this: history of life, soothing narration, longish videos? I use these to wind down before bed, and these are lovely, but I need more content 😩
I can recommend SEA, but he talks mainly about astrophysics and cosmology.
Still, perfect for falling asleep to (and I don't mean this in a bad way, he has absolutely great videos)
History of the Universe, Voices of the Past, History Time
@@HistoryoftheEarth thank you!
@@XraynPR thanks!
@@HistoryoftheEarth oh, I had no idea y'all did more!
I clicked on this video being like "Hey, I wonder if they'll talk about Mistaken Point." I was not disappointed. I've visited there twice 🙂
I legitimately check RUclips for new History of the Earth/Universe, daily. I'm always happy with each new video. World class!
Live in the Charnwood area and the rocks are teeming with very ancient fossils, amazing geology in the area as well.
I alwsys get impress how nature give us clues of ower own past , like the fosilisation proceses , its really amazing that nature give us all this things , frozen "pictures" of old creatures
This channel is criminally underrated
No, it has many subscribers. It’s anything but underrated.
Is 547K underrated?
@@futuristica1710 I believe it deserves more
@@futuristica1710 u have an adequate amount
Imagine basically seeing a LEAF moving towards you, that’s scary.