LOL, RUclips placed a “Context” note on this video: “Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, mainly caused by human activities…” I think we can safely say that human activities did not have an effect on the Carboniferous climate change!
Like many enterprises and institutions, RUclips obviously is wrong, of course, in attributing all climate change to human activities. It is most probably not wrong about present climate change, there is evidence to bury everyone under. But it is clearly ridiculous to automatise such a context note for any sort of climate change, past, present or future! It only needed to qualify climate change as present-day for its note to be taken as true!
Sadly this is not just some amusing side effect. Many channels will end up banned for not bowing to the propaganda. Global warming has become a religion/cult. Whether the topic is relevant or not, any information that could promote independent thought will not be tolerated this is just the beginning.
Fascinating! The increase in oxygen makes good sense. Insects don’t have lungs but instead “breathe” through a complex of spiracles and tubules throughout their bodies. With an increase in oxygen this network was probably significantly reduced allowing an increase in body size. I wonder if predation could have been a partial factor in the drop of large insects towards the end of the Carboniferous…perhaps the rise of reptiles in the Permian. It’s interesting that oxygen levels also increased in the late Jurassic/early Cretaceous…but there were no (as far as we know) large insects….BUT true flying birds were on the rise and may have accounted for reducing any large insect populations . Really interesting topic and well explained. A funny side note. In many of my wanderings thru tropical jungles of the South Pacific and Asia I encountered some pretty massive and scary insects leaving me with the impression I was a time traveler back to the Carboniferous😱🫣😱🫣!!!
I learn so much from every single video. I want to get into precambrian geoscience. Your explanations of how different depositional environments can reconstruct the past Earth are really enlightening.
Thanks so much for the kind words, I am so happy that you learn a lot from my videos ;D Also, yes! Precambrian science is soooo cool! (it's the best ;)
Enjoy these. Learn a lot. You go fast and throw a lot at us, but you do it in a way that allows us to keep up with a bit of effort. I like that, learning a lot of things. There was this Great Course I watched, 48 lectures, called "How the Earth Works". I was always looking for a more in depth followup, and here it is.
Ah, that’s how to pronounce “loess”. I love how geology, biology, biogeography, chemistry, climatology, and various paleo fields all come together when playing detective to sort out what happened, when, and why. I’m always looking for popular nonfiction books on the subject matter. Eg When Life Nearly Died (Benton), Ends of the World (Brennan), a few books by Peter Ward. If you have other recommendations, maybe you could mention them in relevant videos? Eg if you want to learn more, see … Fascinating video, btw. Really liked it. Subscribing.
@@chrisconnors7418 Hey Chris, thanks for the comment and the sub! I am so glad you like this and other videos on my channel, I am also a fan of all those fields! I can tell we have very similar interests :D Hope you enjoy the other videos on my channel and the books if you end up getting any ;)
@@GEOGIRL I have all but two of the books and ... *drum roll* ... I now have them! Thank you again for that list. The two I got were Nick Lane's Oxygen, and Life's Engines. Contemplating Earth System History too. We would have similar interests, I think. It seems you're approaching them from the geology side, and I'm approaching them from the biology/ecology side. The disciplines all connect so you end up trying to learn all the earth science disciplines (and astronomy) 'cos curiosity and a need to learn are some potent addictive drugs. :)
I love the professionalism and scientific content of your site. My enthusiasm for geology has no limit to say the least. One point that I'd like to stress is the cause of the pensylvanian glaciation. I believe that the enormous collision between gondwana and laurussia created a substancial carbon sink and has a big importance as for its contribution to the start of the glacial period. Merci pour votre remarquable travail. Votre ami Canadien!
You are very welcome! And thank you for both the kind words and the information! You are so right about the tectonics at the time contributing to the ice age! I talk more about that in my late paleozoic geology video coming soon, but it's very important to point it out here as well, so thank you! :D
This made my day, thank you so much! I couldn't agree more, I can't think of anything I enjoy more than gaining knowledge :D (well sometimes I enjoy ice cream and netflix slightly more than knowledge, but in the long run knowledge is my fav lol)
This one made me think of something super specific - Not sure if you've ever heard of the Mississippi Chat but it is a tripolitic chert that in some way, after this video, is similar in a lot of ways to glacial tillite. Hmmm. Interesting. Could there have been glaciers on, say, the Osage uplift that would have provided a source of tillite that could have been deposited in lows along the unconformity? Would explain the distribution of chat also. Cool video!
Thank you! It wasn't on my top list until I did the research to make this and other videos about it, but now it is up there for sure! It is such a cool time in Earth history ;D
the Carboniferous was a period not an era the 5th period of the Paleozoic era epochs make up periods periods make up eras eras make up eons we live in the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era of the Phanerozoic eon
James Lovelock, who first came up with the Gaia theory, died maybe a week ago now. He lived up to 102! He was hoping to take a ride into space on SpaceX!
@@GEOGIRL can't imagine sending up someone so frail on those rockets; but, I do have to wonder if just the goal/dream/purpose of life kept him alive. I often think that people who die early, kind of let themselves go. I mean outside of things like cancer/heart(and more things like that) attack, if you keep active, both physically and mentally, that you should live longer.
@@GEOGIRL agree so many factors that play a role to get us where we are and we still dont understand half of it. for me its a life long journey that keeps amazing me. inspires me to make the best of it and keep looking with the eyes of a child:D
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. As always, I am impressed by your generosity. The information may come from a textbook, but the presentation is easier to follow and more engaging than any textbook I've ever read. I leave this comment as an offering to the algorithm gods.
LOVE your discussions on Paleozoic Geoscience! The Carboniferous Period has always fascinated me, because of the rise of "Wood" veined Trees. It was so prolific that we can use the Coal for many more years. Of course, the greatly increased Oxygen due to the prolific Tree growth, gave us GIANT INSECTS!! (Perfectly OK, you calling Mega Arthropleura an "insect"!) I had forgotten about the Ice Age that all that Oxygen production and CO2 entrapment caused! 😳
My favorite era! Forests so vast and untouched for millions of years! Also, strange to see oxygen level kinda mutating the insects! + MOM, there's a 2 meters bug in my room! ;)
Hi Geo Girl :) This is so great. Climate and Ice Ages are one of my greatest interests concerning geology. I didn't know that was the difference between the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian. Besides a sizeable area of fossiliferous Pennsylvanian material in central Maryland, in regions of the state of Pennsylvania north-east of us, there are plenty of areas of Anthracite coal to explore. I think I may have mentioned that a month ago or so, I attended a talk about those fossils :)
I've subscribed. Your videos are clearly informative, although I miss this and that detail sometimes (but not all details can be included, I'm aware, lest your videos reach excessive lengths and require extraordinary efforts).
Very good video! Thank you! Also, there was ANOTHER extinction in the end Carboniferous? I was just reading about the Middle Miocene Disruption. There are a lot more extinctions than the Big Five. Yeesh, life on Earth just can’t catch a break!
The most massive extinction happens everyday in the tree of life. It is not punctual like those recognised extinctions, but is far more numerous. Were it not there such a massive continuous extinction, there would be a lot more species around, but those that hold first to a niche prevail over newcomers, which then go extinct silently even before leaving any trace of their brief existence. Only when usual environmental conditions are changed permanently and species depending on the previous situations go extinct, new species radiate and a few of them occupy the vacant niches, but most of new also perish. Meanwhile, such new species go extinct everyday.
If I recall correctly there was a recent study that indicated the role of higher oxygen concentration on the large size of Carboniferous insects has been overstated. Apparently even with the modern oxygen concentration insects could theoretically get a lot bigger than they are now, but don't because the niche of larger animals is held by vertebrates and insect biology doesn't scale up very well with larger size (not having proper lungs is a big part of that, though not the only thing).
The giant millipedes (Arthropleura) of the Carboniferous are often presented as frightening. Millipedes are almost all detritivores and the giant one probably was no different. Heck, if we could go back in time to the Carboniferous we would be in no danger at all from those millipedes. Some of the centipedes from that time might have been a different story.
Hi there! Thank you! I have seen your other requests for geophysics videos and I am sorry it took me a while to get back to you, but unfortunately, I am not that skilled with the physics side of things, so it's unlikely that I could make good videos about geophysics... But if you give me a suggestion of a specific topic within geophysics I can look into it and see if I can learn everything well enough to teach it. Did you have anything specific in mind?
Great video! Quick question, would it be reasonable to say that if we keep burning fossil fuel eventually all that stored carbon will end up in the atmosphere and create a climate or atleast temps similar to the periods before it was deposited, like the carboniferous? Also could more carbon also affect more plant growth and more % of oxygen in the atmosphere or how does this work?
I don't understand the supposed "inverse relationship of [atmospheric] carbon and oxygen." The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has always (since the Great Oxygenation Event) been much smaller than that of O2, so even if you double (or halve) the amount of CO2 it will make hardly any difference to the percentage of O2. I looked it up and the maximum of CO2 was about 2000 ppm (0.2%) while today it is about 400 ppm (0.04%). Also, the percentage of Co2 a few hundred years ago was the lowest it had ever been throughout Earth's history. How do you get 35% and 21% for O2 from that? A 14% higher percentage of O2 cannot be accounted for by plants absorbing all the carbon.
Great question! It has actually little to do with the absolute amounts (or percentages) of O2 and CO2 in the atmosphere and more to do with the relative amounts of each. The relative amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide undergo inversely related fluctuations because of the way CO2 is produced. CO2 is produced by the oxidation of reduced organic carbon. O2 is used to oxidize the reduced organic carbon, and the more O2 is used, the more CO2 is produced (decreasing atmospheric O2 and increasing CO2). The opposite is also true: when organic C burial rates are high (meaning the organic C is escaping oxidation), the relative amount of O2 in the atmosphere increases because it's not being used to oxidize that organic carbon. Does that make sense?
@@GEOGIRL Thank you for your reply. You say the oxygen comes from photosynthesis. The main end product of photosynthesis is probably cellulose, which has the formula (C6H10O5)n. The main inputs of photosynthesis, apart from sunlight, are CO2 and H2O. Notice that there are twice as many H as O in the cellulose molecule, so photosynthesis is not liberating any oxygen from water but only from CO2. But the amount of CO2 available is tiny compared to all the extra oxygen, so the question in my mind is still where the latter came from when its percentage in the atmosphere was 35%.
@@mortkebab2849 Since 3/4 (now) of the O2 released into the atmosphere comes from algae, I'm gonna say that cellulose is not the main product of photosynthesis-
Don’t get me wrong, I love insects and other creepy crawlers, but not when they invade my home, hiding under furniture and falling from the ceiling, believe me I’ve had a lot of scorpions spiders and centipedes this past summer. As interesting as it would be, I’d prefer that they stay small, instead of suffering unpleasant heart attacks after encountering these big bugs. Also it’s always very interesting to learn about other Ice Age events that took place outside of the Cenozoic Era which are typically the first to be associated with the Ice Age in general.
@@GEOGIRL It’s good to hear from you too. Apologies for my absence, I’ve still been watching and enjoying all of your brilliant videos that you’ve made while still giving your outstanding channel my full support as always. Keep it up with the terrific work my friend. 😊❤😉👍
My sympathies on your replying to people who are trying to argue CO² causing gobal heating in the present is not happening or irrelevant. Still blows my mind that for 50 million years 'woody' plant life could evade decomposition because of the development of lignin, taking fungi and bacteria that long to develop the abilities to break it down, leading to these vast and deep coal swamps and carbon sequestration. I know this hypothesis is not completely accepted by all, however the 'trees' that existed then having a hugely greater amount of lignin to modern woody plants and a vastly increased proportion of their 'trunk' being highly lignin rich bark I feel is very compelling evidence indeed.
I do have to wonder how much the added oxygen affected forest fires. I would imagine that with 75% more oxygen than we have today that fires would have been very intense.
It seems if most of the land surfaces were locked up in the southern hemisphere nearer to where antarctica would be, most land would be frozen due to the fact the sun doesnt radiate that part of the globe as the northern hemisphere? Like all extinction events I dont think we can point to just one thing. So many varibles are involved we dont know. ;-)
Question for you Rachel. Are you sure that it is scientifically accurate to describe the 35% oxygen level in the Carboniferous as "carbon burial"? I'm quite sure that this level of oxygen in the troposphere at that time was due to photosynthesis, which was a result of the high co2 level in the troposphere at that time. Carbon dioxide levels were quite high throughout the Paleozoic except during glacial periods. But even then, co2 was still higher during Paleozoic glacials then it has been during Neogrne period glacials. This is where you can apply the carbon burial theory. In the current epoch. 400 PPM is still very low consudering the average since the Cambrian. I have calculated this at roughly 1960 PPM average over 540 million years. It would take quite a bit of the sequestered carbon to saturate the atmosphere enough for photosynthesis to bring a Caboniferous level of atmospheric O2. The Carboniferous rainforest collapse is theorized to be an overabundance of photosynthisizing organisms. CO2 bottomed out. The absolute bottom is 150 PPM. Photosynthesis ceases at that point.
Well I mean I say 'C burial' but it means the same things as photosynthesis: photosynthesis is C burial (a sink for inorganic C by converting it to organic C). And any time inorganic C is buried or converted into organic C, O is released and increases in the relative concentration in the atmosphere and oceans. So I think we are saying the exact same things just in a different way ;)
@@GEOGIRL Allright then. I guess you're correct. I see why you are gaining subscribers. You are approaching some of the same science from a slightly different angle. Little bit different with the lingo and subject matter. I encourage you to capture the imaginations and attrntion of people your age. Science has kind of lost its way right now. I just recently discovered your channel. I will continue watching your other videos. Thank you for the speedy reply. I appreciate that. Have a great day Rachel.
@@TheErik249 Thanks so much! I hope to continue to catch the attention of people my age and all ages to get them interested in science! :D And thank you for bringing up these important points in the comments! I sometimes use terminology that I forget to explain completely, so I appreciate it greatly when others explain it in another light or explain it in more depth in the comments ;)
@@GEOGIRL You are welcome Rachel! REQUESTS: 1. The Pleistocene glaciation and its many glacial retreats and glacial advances. 2. The Younger-Dryus and older-Dryus climatic events. 3. The Bolling-Allerod cooling and warming event. 4. Roman warm period 5. The Medieval warm period. 6. The little ice age cooling event. 7. The P.E.T.M. 8. Mid Oligocene cooling. 9. When and how the ozone layer was created. 10. The birth of photosynthesis, and how important it is to life.
@@TheErik249 Wow! Love all the suggestions thank you! I have a few of those covered in previous videos actually, here: Pleistocene-Holocene periods & climate: ruclips.net/video/-YGD4VcnKEQ/видео.html Current ice age: ruclips.net/video/_VpzDyNY_wI/видео.html PETM & Oligocene Cooling: ruclips.net/video/Eq4Dx-JPBuE/видео.html First photosynthesizers: ruclips.net/video/x5wVW3OGg7c/видео.html Hope you enjoy! And thanks for the additional suggestions ;D
Question: if the oxygen levels were higher during the Carboniferous age because the Earth was dominated by plants, which resulted in giant insects; does it follow that in today's world, as we induce higher levels of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, insects should get smaller and smaller? Also: if we continue to increase greenhouse gasses like Carbon Dioxide into the air, we might assume that would be better for large forests to thrive, and start balancing things out again, except we're chopping down all the forrests simultaneously, so...what sort of impact might increased CO2 levels, without vast forrests to balance it out with by maintaining Oxygen levels, have on human lungs? I know these are more like biology and zoology questions than geology questions, so maybe these questions are inappropriate for here. Just, curious because it seems like there was a collapse of plant life that marked the transition from the late Carboniferous to the early Permian, and the lack of plants resulted in a lack of Oxygen which resulted in the end of extraordinarily colossal insects. Is this not so? Another question: can high levels of Oxygen erode sandstone and granite?
Very good video! Thank you! Interestingly, this recent video by PBS Eons - m.ruclips.net/video/tI6F57s78cI/видео.html - says that the giant arthropods existed for millions of years before the oxygen spike, when the levels were comparable to today’s. So what allowed the arthropods to get so big (although high O2 certainly helped)? Eons suggests that a lack of competition from vertebrates meant that arthropods could fill the niches of large, terrestrial herbivores and carnivores. After the Carboniferous, vertebrate megafauna simply out-competed them. So apparently, gigantic bugs and humans just can’t coexist. I’m okay with that! Also, there was ANOTHER extinction in the end Carboniferous? I was just reading about the Middle Miocene Disruption. There are a lot more extinctions than the Big Five. Yeesh, life on Earth just can’t catch a break!
Thank you very much for another fascinating vid! Giant insects how cool is that ? lol At some point you should have a contest, and the winner gets to choose which door, 1, 2, or 3 they get the prize from lol
I know right, giant insects are one of the coolest topics I've gotten to talk about on my channel! :D Ooh what a fun idea, what kind of prizes should I give out?
trilobites could they have diverged into millipedes and isopods around the carboniferous period with hold outs being something like triops as segmented arthropod transition divergent tree as well?
With trilobites also being related to millipede and maybe centipedes, isopods. I wonder if other Eurypterids moved on to other arthropods to maybe even becoming some crawdads shrimp or lobsters if not horseshoe crabs and spiders?
9:23 Actually I was more thinking that the giant millipedes and dragonflies were outliers and the sizes of most insects were more moderate? (or so I understand). I won't get on your case for calling them insects lol Also, hope I don't creep you out by saying so but the pink baseballcap look rocks (was going to post a "rock on" emoji here but I couldn't find one)
Hahaha Thankfully mosquitoes didn't evolve until about 200 mya in the Mesozoic, so they wouldn't have been around in the Carboniferous. But there may have been a similar type of insect around that was an ancestor to mosquitoes, not sure, but that would've been AWFUL lol!
I turned to Wikipedia to find out how the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian got their names. There was a lot I didn't understand. GSSP? Are su-periods often named after a region? I'll stick to your videos thank you very much.
When you scientists say, "not much [land] life to devastate", what would that amount of life look like to our eyes? If I trekked across that megacontinent, would I see vast stretches of barren rock, or vast sheets of green algae, bacteria, mats of overspending fungi and plants and bugs? Or would I see something else?
If you could go back in time, Rachel, which period of the Carboniferous would you visit and which part? I suppose it would be before the ice-age? Edit: Missipian and Pennsylvanian are North American terms whereas the use different names in Europe ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Europe ).
@@GEOGIRLbe careful with timetravel. What if the knuckle bone we base all Denisovian on is not ancestral of Asians but a descendent? Sounds hectic if can't go back to recover a knuckle 🤨💥🤷♀️
Do you have any videos explaining interglacial periods? Periods of extreme heat? What have been the hottest periods in earth's history we know of? 🙏💚💧☀️🌍
You should try to look deeper into the carboniferous. It looks like the the plants absorbed the CO2 drasticly, but the temperatures did NOT drop for many million years to come. So the carboniferous questions the green house theory. Sorry for being obsessed with CO2, it just such a big issue (seemingly) today.. Thats why i am always triggered.
I am not sure what you mean, the ice age in the miss-penn time was due to the increased C uptake by plants & burial. The timing makes sense because it had to not only become taken up, but also buried (which takes millions of years) to actually make the climate start to cool. Plant uptake of CO2 doesn't do much to climate, it is the burial and long term storage that does. So it follows the greenhouse effect perfectly from what I've read.
@@GEOGIRL Well it takes million years for the planet to cool, why are we so concerned now and being told that our CO2 will heat up the planet in decades? What i was trying to say is that there are graphs (Scotese) that show that it took many million years indeed for the planet to cool down, long after the drastic CO2 decline due to the terrestial flora explosion. But i heard criticism that the data is too rough..for my argument.
You mention you didn’t come up with the name great dying, do you know who did? I’ve been looking for the origin of the name for a while and I’ve come up with nothing
Good morning from the almost here drier time. I've had my disputes but I seem to see my snd other logic. The issue faced was a early flag I felt like tasting or a hug . The after time is this where is that, ? I saw I was more inclined to see a mind dominated by the eyes. In my journey I walked a lot more than I had and reasoned I had other senses that had a great ideas. As intense and many as seeing..the sugars I are forced my.brain to accept sight in my case in preference to then hearing , now it's mite listening . The dry season is hot simmilar to Northern latitudes where snows and cold rains are signs to stay indoors more than walking looking for handkerchiefs to mourn the deaths of other species the reason is conserving hydrated cells, the water used is.a vert precious resource. The dry season increases that value to higher value than walking in hot weather. The arguments is trying to find the in-between where this makes the above not as necessary. That is tragice errors. The issue I found is the lack daisy undisciplined approach after two weeks ..that then is near death experiences. The Rd I found where walking allows in preference to cars or home cat office and return made a body unaware and thus was the war. The enemy taking from behind the wheel was once five minutes in foot the friend indeed. The reason is we are all ok our environment though decides what we are more than what any one thinks is there identify.. the car and ot the motorbike takes all the resources away every thing from the owners to the local community where they work hunting for money. Using the buss services the staffaking sure the land rivers sky and seas are not pokited thet all need homes clean laundry fashion rewards more than the reason of my car and or my Moto bike. So the war is based on the internal mind it can't drive knowing it depends on the community. Take the bus and walk . The war in these minds is finished
Lol had no idea people used it to make anti global warming estimates, that would be unfortunate given it is too coarse and wide a time range to even show the trends on timescales significant for the current event. Oh well, there's always gonna be deniers I guess 🤷♀
LOL, RUclips placed a “Context” note on this video: “Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, mainly caused by human activities…” I think we can safely say that human activities did not have an effect on the Carboniferous climate change!
Haha it does that whenever I say the terms climate or global warming LOL It doesn't car that I am talking about millions of years ago haha!
Like many enterprises and institutions, RUclips obviously is wrong, of course, in attributing all climate change to human activities. It is most probably not wrong about present climate change, there is evidence to bury everyone under. But it is clearly ridiculous to automatise such a context note for any sort of climate change, past, present or future! It only needed to qualify climate change as present-day for its note to be taken as true!
Sadly this is not just some amusing side effect. Many channels will end up banned for not bowing to the propaganda. Global warming has become a religion/cult. Whether the topic is relevant or not, any information that could promote independent thought will not be tolerated this is just the beginning.
Fascinating! The increase in oxygen makes good sense. Insects don’t have lungs but instead “breathe” through a complex of spiracles and tubules throughout their bodies. With an increase in oxygen this network was probably significantly reduced allowing an increase in body size. I wonder if predation could have been a partial factor in the drop of large insects towards the end of the Carboniferous…perhaps the rise of reptiles in the Permian. It’s interesting that oxygen levels also increased in the late Jurassic/early Cretaceous…but there were no (as far as we know) large insects….BUT true flying birds were on the rise and may have accounted for reducing any large insect populations . Really interesting topic and well explained. A funny side note. In many of my wanderings thru tropical jungles of the South Pacific and Asia I encountered some pretty massive and scary insects leaving me with the impression I was a time traveler back to the Carboniferous😱🫣😱🫣!!!
Wow! How cool! I hope that someday I will get to go visit places like that and see those amazing creatures!!
I learn so much from every single video. I want to get into precambrian geoscience. Your explanations of how different depositional environments can reconstruct the past Earth are really enlightening.
Thanks so much for the kind words, I am so happy that you learn a lot from my videos ;D
Also, yes! Precambrian science is soooo cool! (it's the best ;)
Once again, exceptional.
When the Earth's O2 levels peaked at 35% at the end of the Carboniferous, Rachel, there must've been some truly horrendous forrest-fires.
Enjoy these. Learn a lot. You go fast and throw a lot at us, but you do it in a way that allows us to keep up with a bit of effort. I like that, learning a lot of things. There was this Great Course I watched, 48 lectures, called "How the Earth Works". I was always looking for a more in depth followup, and here it is.
I would nope out of the planet If I ever met any of these. Great video!
Thank you!! Never heard of this long Ice Age--
Ah, that’s how to pronounce “loess”.
I love how geology, biology, biogeography, chemistry, climatology, and various paleo fields all come together when playing detective to sort out what happened, when, and why. I’m always looking for popular nonfiction books on the subject matter. Eg When Life Nearly Died (Benton), Ends of the World (Brennan), a few books by Peter Ward.
If you have other recommendations, maybe you could mention them in relevant videos? Eg if you want to learn more, see …
Fascinating video, btw. Really liked it. Subscribing.
Never mind, I found your recommended book lists in the info section. Thank you!!
@@chrisconnors7418 Hey Chris, thanks for the comment and the sub! I am so glad you like this and other videos on my channel, I am also a fan of all those fields! I can tell we have very similar interests :D
Hope you enjoy the other videos on my channel and the books if you end up getting any ;)
@@GEOGIRL I have all but two of the books and ... *drum roll* ... I now have them! Thank you again for that list. The two I got were Nick Lane's Oxygen, and Life's Engines. Contemplating Earth System History too.
We would have similar interests, I think. It seems you're approaching them from the geology side, and I'm approaching them from the biology/ecology side. The disciplines all connect so you end up trying to learn all the earth science disciplines (and astronomy) 'cos curiosity and a need to learn are some potent addictive drugs. :)
I love the professionalism and scientific content of your site. My enthusiasm for geology has no limit to say the least. One point that I'd like to stress is the cause of the pensylvanian glaciation. I believe that the enormous collision between gondwana and laurussia created a substancial carbon sink and has a big importance as for its contribution to the start of the glacial period. Merci pour votre remarquable travail.
Votre ami Canadien!
You are very welcome! And thank you for both the kind words and the information! You are so right about the tectonics at the time contributing to the ice age! I talk more about that in my late paleozoic geology video coming soon, but it's very important to point it out here as well, so thank you! :D
Informative and entertaining vid - thank you!
You are a perfect example of the statement, "knowledge is beautiful".
This made my day, thank you so much! I couldn't agree more, I can't think of anything I enjoy more than gaining knowledge :D (well sometimes I enjoy ice cream and netflix slightly more than knowledge, but in the long run knowledge is my fav lol)
@@GEOGIRL You give out valuable formation, I give out the occasional smile. I'm glad we both enjoy both !
This one made me think of something super specific - Not sure if you've ever heard of the Mississippi Chat but it is a tripolitic chert that in some way, after this video, is similar in a lot of ways to glacial tillite. Hmmm. Interesting. Could there have been glaciers on, say, the Osage uplift that would have provided a source of tillite that could have been deposited in lows along the unconformity? Would explain the distribution of chat also. Cool video!
Oh, giving a hug to that cute giant caterp-- WAIT A MINUTE
The Carboniferous Era is one of my favorite periods. Good video.
Thank you! It wasn't on my top list until I did the research to make this and other videos about it, but now it is up there for sure! It is such a cool time in Earth history ;D
the Carboniferous was a period
not an era
the 5th period of the Paleozoic era
epochs make up periods
periods make up eras
eras make up eons
we live in the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era of the Phanerozoic eon
Outstanding! 👏I want Meganeure's in my garden: i will have the envy of the whole neighborhood!!!😁
Excellent presentation
Thank you! :D
James Lovelock, who first came up with the Gaia theory, died maybe a week ago now. He lived up to 102! He was hoping to take a ride into space on SpaceX!
OMG 102! Wow that's crazy, so close to going into space! Too bad :(
@@GEOGIRL can't imagine sending up someone so frail on those rockets; but, I do have to wonder if just the goal/dream/purpose of life kept him alive. I often think that people who die early, kind of let themselves go.
I mean outside of things like cancer/heart(and more things like that) attack, if you keep active, both physically and mentally, that you should live longer.
giant insects O.O
Yes! Isn't nature so incredible?! :D
@@GEOGIRL agree so many factors that play a role to get us where we are and we still dont understand half of it. for me its a life long journey that keeps amazing me. inspires me to make the best of it and keep looking with the eyes of a child:D
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. As always, I am impressed by your generosity. The information may come from a textbook, but the presentation is easier to follow and more engaging than any textbook I've ever read. I leave this comment as an offering to the algorithm gods.
Great video! Never knew that O levels got that high.
I didn't either til making this video!! Haha!
my favorite content creator , when I'm enjoying some recreational organics...
Thanks! Glad you enjoy my content ;)
GO GEO GIRL!!
LOVE your discussions on Paleozoic Geoscience! The Carboniferous Period has always fascinated me, because of the rise of "Wood" veined Trees. It was so prolific that we can use the Coal for many more years.
Of course, the greatly increased Oxygen due to the prolific Tree growth, gave us GIANT INSECTS!!
(Perfectly OK, you calling Mega Arthropleura an "insect"!)
I had forgotten about the Ice Age that all that Oxygen production and CO2 entrapment caused! 😳
I LOVE your enthuasiasm about this because I feel the SAME WAY! It's so cool!!
That's what I love about your Channel.... your enthusiasm!!! Your excitement on ultra early Biology and Anthropology.....
Is super contagious!! 😍
My favorite era! Forests so vast and untouched for millions of years! Also, strange to see oxygen level kinda mutating the insects! + MOM, there's a 2 meters bug in my room! ;)
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I love your channel!
Thanks so much for the comment, I am so glad you like it :D
@geogirl 12:19 what are some of the complexities that change the inverse relationship between carbon dioxide and oxygen?
Hi Geo Girl :) This is so great. Climate and Ice Ages are one of my greatest interests concerning geology. I didn't know that was the difference between the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian. Besides a sizeable area of fossiliferous Pennsylvanian material in central Maryland, in regions of the state of Pennsylvania north-east of us, there are plenty of areas of Anthracite coal to explore. I think I may have mentioned that a month ago or so, I attended a talk about those fossils :)
There’s some massive creepy crawlies. Rachel are you scared 😱 of spiders 🕷?
I ❤️ GEO GIRL
Nope, love spiders! haha The only bug I absolutely hate are cockroches LOL!
I absolutely hate wasps 🐝 followed closely by mosquitoes 🦟 horse/deer flies.
I've subscribed. Your videos are clearly informative, although I miss this and that detail sometimes (but not all details can be included, I'm aware, lest your videos reach excessive lengths and require extraordinary efforts).
its hard to comprehend the true scale of time
So true!!!
Very informative..❣️
Keep growing 💗
Thank you !
@@GEOGIRL welcome ❣️
@@GEOGIRL
How are you??
Consider, that loss of co2 equates to less atmosphere. Less atmosphere means less heat storage regardless of which gases are present.
Very nice video 👌👌✨✨
Thanks! ;D
@@GEOGIRL most welcome..😊🙃🙃✨
More huge insects pls.
Very good video! Thank you!
Also, there was ANOTHER extinction in the end Carboniferous? I was just reading about the Middle Miocene Disruption. There are a lot more extinctions than the Big Five. Yeesh, life on Earth just can’t catch a break!
Yes! SO many extinctions lol But the extinctions are also what drive evolution forward so it's a give and take ;)
The most massive extinction happens everyday in the tree of life. It is not punctual like those recognised extinctions, but is far more numerous. Were it not there such a massive continuous extinction, there would be a lot more species around, but those that hold first to a niche prevail over newcomers, which then go extinct silently even before leaving any trace of their brief existence. Only when usual environmental conditions are changed permanently and species depending on the previous situations go extinct, new species radiate and a few of them occupy the vacant niches, but most of new also perish. Meanwhile, such new species go extinct everyday.
If I recall correctly there was a recent study that indicated the role of higher oxygen concentration on the large size of Carboniferous insects has been overstated. Apparently even with the modern oxygen concentration insects could theoretically get a lot bigger than they are now, but don't because the niche of larger animals is held by vertebrates and insect biology doesn't scale up very well with larger size (not having proper lungs is a big part of that, though not the only thing).
Very interesting. One question. How did the coal form on the South African highveld when this region was around the South Pole at the time¿
The south pole was not like it is today, climate was much warmer and more tropical worldwide! :D
Los Angeles to New York has 4.5 millimeters. Considering 1 millimeter as 1 year. 50 million years is about 35 miles of length.
The giant millipedes (Arthropleura) of the Carboniferous are often presented as frightening. Millipedes are almost all detritivores and the giant one probably was no different. Heck, if we could go back in time to the Carboniferous we would be in no danger at all from those millipedes. Some of the centipedes from that time might have been a different story.
True, but cockroaches are no danger to me but I'd still be frightened if I saw a 10 ft cockroach! hahaha ;)
Very helpful video 👍👍. Could you make videos on geophysics?
Hi there! Thank you! I have seen your other requests for geophysics videos and I am sorry it took me a while to get back to you, but unfortunately, I am not that skilled with the physics side of things, so it's unlikely that I could make good videos about geophysics... But if you give me a suggestion of a specific topic within geophysics I can look into it and see if I can learn everything well enough to teach it. Did you have anything specific in mind?
@@GEOGIRL thank you so much 🙏. I just want to understand isostasy and gravity and magnetic methods of geophysics for mineral exploration
@@samakshgupta8750 Thanks for the clarification! I will look into it and see what I can come up with ;)
@@GEOGIRL thank you so much . Your videos are really very helpful to us🙏
This is like a college course except it's actually interesting and no home work.
Great video! Quick question, would it be reasonable to say that if we keep burning fossil fuel eventually all that stored carbon will end up in the atmosphere and create a climate or atleast temps similar to the periods before it was deposited, like the carboniferous?
Also could more carbon also affect more plant growth and more % of oxygen in the atmosphere or how does this work?
I don't understand the supposed "inverse relationship of [atmospheric] carbon and oxygen." The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has always (since the Great Oxygenation Event) been much smaller than that of O2, so even if you double (or halve) the amount of CO2 it will make hardly any difference to the percentage of O2. I looked it up and the maximum of CO2 was about 2000 ppm (0.2%) while today it is about 400 ppm (0.04%). Also, the percentage of Co2 a few hundred years ago was the lowest it had ever been throughout Earth's history. How do you get 35% and 21% for O2 from that? A 14% higher percentage of O2 cannot be accounted for by plants absorbing all the carbon.
Great question! It has actually little to do with the absolute amounts (or percentages) of O2 and CO2 in the atmosphere and more to do with the relative amounts of each. The relative amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide undergo inversely related fluctuations because of the way CO2 is produced. CO2 is produced by the oxidation of reduced organic carbon. O2 is used to oxidize the reduced organic carbon, and the more O2 is used, the more CO2 is produced (decreasing atmospheric O2 and increasing CO2). The opposite is also true: when organic C burial rates are high (meaning the organic C is escaping oxidation), the relative amount of O2 in the atmosphere increases because it's not being used to oxidize that organic carbon. Does that make sense?
@@GEOGIRL OK, one goes up and the other goes down, but wildly out of proportion to one another. Where does all that extra oxygen come from?
@@mortkebab2849 Ah I see the question now. So the oxygen came from photosynthesis and the amount of O2 (~20%) vs CO2 (
@@GEOGIRL Thank you for your reply. You say the oxygen comes from photosynthesis. The main end product of photosynthesis is probably cellulose, which has the formula (C6H10O5)n. The main inputs of photosynthesis, apart from sunlight, are CO2 and H2O. Notice that there are twice as many H as O in the cellulose molecule, so photosynthesis is not liberating any oxygen from water but only from CO2. But the amount of CO2 available is tiny compared to all the extra oxygen, so the question in my mind is still where the latter came from when its percentage in the atmosphere was 35%.
@@mortkebab2849 Since 3/4 (now) of the O2 released into the atmosphere comes from algae, I'm gonna say that cellulose is not the main product of photosynthesis-
Geo Girl and her monster pets, seems to read the front picture. 😅
Must watch for sure.
Hahaha Yes! I would love to have a giant millipede and dragonfly as my pets!!
cool 😯
I know right!! ;D
Don’t get me wrong, I love insects and other creepy crawlers, but not when they invade my home, hiding under furniture and falling from the ceiling, believe me I’ve had a lot of scorpions spiders and centipedes this past summer. As interesting as it would be, I’d prefer that they stay small, instead of suffering unpleasant heart attacks after encountering these big bugs.
Also it’s always very interesting to learn about other Ice Age events that took place outside of the Cenozoic Era which are typically the first to be associated with the Ice Age in general.
Hey, good to hear from you, glad you enjoyed the video! I also would prefer they remain small ;)
@@GEOGIRL It’s good to hear from you too. Apologies for my absence, I’ve still been watching and enjoying all of your brilliant videos that you’ve made while still giving your outstanding channel my full support as always. Keep it up with the terrific work my friend. 😊❤😉👍
"That's just rude." Lol. @8:28
My sympathies on your replying to people who are trying to argue CO² causing gobal heating in the present is not happening or irrelevant.
Still blows my mind that for 50 million years 'woody' plant life could evade decomposition because of the development of lignin, taking fungi and bacteria that long to develop the abilities to break it down, leading to these vast and deep coal swamps and carbon sequestration. I know this hypothesis is not completely accepted by all, however the 'trees' that existed then having a hugely greater amount of lignin to modern woody plants and a vastly increased proportion of their 'trunk' being highly lignin rich bark I feel is very compelling evidence indeed.
Hii ..geo girt...
Wonderful look..👌👌
Thanks ;)
@@GEOGIRL most welcome..✨✨🙃🙃😊
What other giant insects were discovered besides millipedes and dragonflies? Btw I miss them.
That's why global warming events are so scary: all the positive feedback loops.
I do have to wonder how much the added oxygen affected forest fires. I would imagine that with 75% more oxygen than we have today that fires would have been very intense.
It seems if most of the land surfaces were locked up in the southern hemisphere nearer to where antarctica would be, most land would be frozen due to the fact the sun doesnt radiate that part of the globe as the northern hemisphere? Like all extinction events I dont think we can point to just one thing. So many varibles are involved we dont know. ;-)
❤️👍❤️
Question for you Rachel.
Are you sure that it is scientifically accurate to describe the 35% oxygen level in the Carboniferous as "carbon burial"?
I'm quite sure that this level of oxygen in the troposphere at that time was due to photosynthesis, which was a result of the high co2 level in the troposphere at that time.
Carbon dioxide levels were quite high throughout the Paleozoic except during glacial periods.
But even then, co2 was still higher during Paleozoic glacials then it has been during Neogrne period glacials.
This is where you can apply the carbon burial theory.
In the current epoch.
400 PPM is still very low consudering the average since the Cambrian.
I have calculated this at roughly 1960 PPM average over 540 million years.
It would take quite a bit of the sequestered carbon to saturate the atmosphere enough for photosynthesis to bring a Caboniferous level of atmospheric O2.
The Carboniferous rainforest collapse is theorized to be an overabundance of photosynthisizing organisms.
CO2 bottomed out.
The absolute bottom is 150 PPM.
Photosynthesis ceases at that point.
Well I mean I say 'C burial' but it means the same things as photosynthesis: photosynthesis is C burial (a sink for inorganic C by converting it to organic C). And any time inorganic C is buried or converted into organic C, O is released and increases in the relative concentration in the atmosphere and oceans. So I think we are saying the exact same things just in a different way ;)
@@GEOGIRL
Allright then.
I guess you're correct.
I see why you are gaining subscribers.
You are approaching some of the same science from a slightly different angle.
Little bit different with the lingo and subject matter.
I encourage you to capture the imaginations and attrntion of people your age.
Science has kind of lost its way right now.
I just recently discovered your channel.
I will continue watching your other videos.
Thank you for the speedy reply.
I appreciate that.
Have a great day Rachel.
@@TheErik249 Thanks so much! I hope to continue to catch the attention of people my age and all ages to get them interested in science! :D And thank you for bringing up these important points in the comments! I sometimes use terminology that I forget to explain completely, so I appreciate it greatly when others explain it in another light or explain it in more depth in the comments ;)
@@GEOGIRL
You are welcome Rachel!
REQUESTS:
1. The Pleistocene glaciation and its many glacial retreats and glacial advances.
2. The Younger-Dryus and older-Dryus climatic events.
3. The Bolling-Allerod cooling and warming event.
4. Roman warm period
5. The Medieval warm period.
6. The little ice age cooling event.
7. The P.E.T.M.
8. Mid Oligocene cooling.
9. When and how the ozone layer was created.
10. The birth of photosynthesis, and how important it is to life.
@@TheErik249 Wow! Love all the suggestions thank you! I have a few of those covered in previous videos actually, here:
Pleistocene-Holocene periods & climate: ruclips.net/video/-YGD4VcnKEQ/видео.html
Current ice age: ruclips.net/video/_VpzDyNY_wI/видео.html
PETM & Oligocene Cooling: ruclips.net/video/Eq4Dx-JPBuE/видео.html
First photosynthesizers: ruclips.net/video/x5wVW3OGg7c/видео.html
Hope you enjoy! And thanks for the additional suggestions ;D
Question: if the oxygen levels were higher during the Carboniferous age because the Earth was dominated by plants, which resulted in giant insects; does it follow that in today's world, as we induce higher levels of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, insects should get smaller and smaller? Also: if we continue to increase greenhouse gasses like Carbon Dioxide into the air, we might assume that would be better for large forests to thrive, and start balancing things out again, except we're chopping down all the forrests simultaneously, so...what sort of impact might increased CO2 levels, without vast forrests to balance it out with by maintaining Oxygen levels, have on human lungs? I know these are more like biology and zoology questions than geology questions, so maybe these questions are inappropriate for here. Just, curious because it seems like there was a collapse of plant life that marked the transition from the late Carboniferous to the early Permian, and the lack of plants resulted in a lack of Oxygen which resulted in the end of extraordinarily colossal insects. Is this not so? Another question: can high levels of Oxygen erode sandstone and granite?
love
Very good video! Thank you! Interestingly, this recent video by PBS Eons - m.ruclips.net/video/tI6F57s78cI/видео.html - says that the giant arthropods existed for millions of years before the oxygen spike, when the levels were comparable to today’s. So what allowed the arthropods to get so big (although high O2 certainly helped)? Eons suggests that a lack of competition from vertebrates meant that arthropods could fill the niches of large, terrestrial herbivores and carnivores. After the Carboniferous, vertebrate megafauna simply out-competed them. So apparently, gigantic bugs and humans just can’t coexist. I’m okay with that!
Also, there was ANOTHER extinction in the end Carboniferous? I was just reading about the Middle Miocene Disruption. There are a lot more extinctions than the Big Five. Yeesh, life on Earth just can’t catch a break!
Thank you very much for another fascinating vid! Giant insects how cool is that ? lol At some point you should have a contest, and the winner gets to choose which door, 1, 2, or 3 they get the prize from lol
I know right, giant insects are one of the coolest topics I've gotten to talk about on my channel! :D Ooh what a fun idea, what kind of prizes should I give out?
@@GEOGIRL Rocks and gems ! lol Or they just get to be nosy and see what is behind the door. lol I'm sure you could make that one fun ! lol
😎
trilobites could they have diverged into millipedes and isopods around the carboniferous period with hold outs being something like triops as segmented arthropod transition divergent tree as well?
With trilobites also being related to millipede and maybe centipedes, isopods. I wonder if other Eurypterids moved on to other arthropods to maybe even becoming some crawdads shrimp or lobsters if not horseshoe crabs and spiders?
9:23 Actually I was more thinking that the giant millipedes and dragonflies were outliers and the sizes of most insects were more moderate? (or so I understand). I won't get on your case for calling them insects lol
Also, hope I don't creep you out by saying so but the pink baseballcap look rocks (was going to post a "rock on" emoji here but I couldn't find one)
The real question is, were there giant mosquitoes in an age before mammals? If so, I'm totally okay with 3 ft long dragonflies.
Hahaha Thankfully mosquitoes didn't evolve until about 200 mya in the Mesozoic, so they wouldn't have been around in the Carboniferous. But there may have been a similar type of insect around that was an ancestor to mosquitoes, not sure, but that would've been AWFUL lol!
Looks like the blood sucking adaptation was around the Great Dying. Made things worse even
Minor correction: Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are subperiods, not periods.
I turned to Wikipedia to find out how the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian got their names. There was a lot I didn't understand. GSSP? Are su-periods often named after a region? I'll stick to your videos thank you very much.
When you scientists say, "not much [land] life to devastate", what would that amount of life look like to our eyes? If I trekked across that megacontinent, would I see vast stretches of barren rock, or vast sheets of green algae, bacteria, mats of overspending fungi and plants and bugs?
Or would I see something else?
If you could go back in time, Rachel, which period of the Carboniferous would you visit and which part? I suppose it would be before the ice-age?
Edit: Missipian and Pennsylvanian are North American terms whereas the use different names in Europe ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Europe ).
Oh that is difficult, I'd have to say the Mississippian yes, I mean the further back I can go in Earth's history to cooler in my opinion!! :D
@@GEOGIRL Would there be any part of Pangea you'd like to visit?
@@GEOGIRLbe careful with timetravel. What if the knuckle bone we base all Denisovian on is not ancestral of Asians but a descendent? Sounds hectic if can't go back to recover a knuckle 🤨💥🤷♀️
Do you have any videos explaining interglacial periods? Periods of extreme heat? What have been the hottest periods in earth's history we know of? 🙏💚💧☀️🌍
Way her Oligocene Cooling episode but in reverse🙃
Were fossils or other evidence first found in Pennsylvania and that’s where the name came from, like wise the Mississippian?
You should try to look deeper into the carboniferous. It looks like the the plants absorbed the CO2 drasticly, but the temperatures did NOT drop for many million years to come. So the carboniferous questions the green house theory. Sorry for being obsessed with CO2, it just such a big issue (seemingly) today.. Thats why i am always triggered.
I am not sure what you mean, the ice age in the miss-penn time was due to the increased C uptake by plants & burial. The timing makes sense because it had to not only become taken up, but also buried (which takes millions of years) to actually make the climate start to cool. Plant uptake of CO2 doesn't do much to climate, it is the burial and long term storage that does. So it follows the greenhouse effect perfectly from what I've read.
@@GEOGIRL Well it takes million years for the planet to cool, why are we so concerned now and being told that our CO2 will heat up the planet in decades? What i was trying to say is that there are graphs (Scotese) that show that it took many million years indeed for the planet to cool down, long after the drastic CO2 decline due to the terrestial flora explosion. But i heard criticism that the data is too rough..for my argument.
You mention you didn’t come up with the name great dying, do you know who did? I’ve been looking for the origin of the name for a while and I’ve come up with nothing
"...that's just rude."
A three meter millipede is cool until you find one in your boot.
Good morning from the almost here drier time. I've had my disputes but I seem to see my snd other logic. The issue faced was a early flag I felt like tasting or a hug .
The after time is this where is that, ? I saw I was more inclined to see a mind dominated by the eyes. In my journey I walked a lot more than I had and reasoned I had other senses that had a great ideas. As intense and many as seeing..the sugars I are forced my.brain to accept sight in my case in preference to then hearing , now it's mite listening . The dry season is hot simmilar to Northern latitudes where snows and cold rains are signs to stay indoors more than walking looking for handkerchiefs to mourn the deaths of other species the reason is conserving hydrated cells, the water used is.a vert precious resource. The dry season increases that value to higher value than walking in hot weather.
The arguments is trying to find the in-between where this makes the above not as necessary. That is tragice errors. The issue I found is the lack daisy undisciplined approach after two weeks
..that then is near death experiences.
The Rd I found where walking allows in preference to cars or home cat office and return made a body unaware and thus was the war.
The enemy taking from behind the wheel was once five minutes in foot the friend indeed. The reason is we are all ok our environment though decides what we are more than what any one thinks is there identify.. the car and ot the motorbike takes all the resources away every thing from the owners to the local community where they work hunting for money. Using the buss services the staffaking sure the land rivers sky and seas are not pokited thet all need homes clean laundry fashion rewards more than the reason of my car and or my Moto bike. So the war is based on the internal mind it can't drive knowing it depends on the community. Take the bus and walk . The war in these minds is finished
I'm sure, Rachel, that all the arachnophobes and arthrophobes are glad that the giant arthropods aren't around anymore😁😈.
biggest land "bug" ever?
Engagement
lol at using the graph from the anti global warming temperature crowd to show past temp/CO2 levels.
Lol had no idea people used it to make anti global warming estimates, that would be unfortunate given it is too coarse and wide a time range to even show the trends on timescales significant for the current event. Oh well, there's always gonna be deniers I guess 🤷♀
@@GEOGIRL potholer54 has a whole video mostly focusing on that graph. i will look it up and reply the link here
@@GEOGIRL ruclips.net/video/OJ6Z04VJDco/видео.html
@@GEOGIRL because he annotes his videos with sources you can find more mentions of it by searching potholer54 geocraft
Nice 🧢
Thanks ;) I got it at the Geological Society of America conference in 2019 :D
Another great and comprehensive video!
Thank you! ;D
You better have a big fly swatter 🪰