this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 168 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (21 children)

Just to put some context:

  • Predatory scorpions a couple feet long
  • Armored millipedes larger than a man; they were probably herbivorous but as the article notes they "would have had few, if any, predators."
  • There is a theory, possibly not real well accepted but it makes sense to me, that trilobites were the creature that way-back-when invented effective predation shortly after evolving vision. (Before which the world was a fairly benign place.) The theory further supposes that the Cambrian Explosion was caused by every other organism on the planet having to scramble not to have their soft blobby flesh munched on at leisure by a limitless army of armored, invulnerable hunters, which they couldn't see or avoid, but who could see and follow them.
[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Why do you find that particular theory about the Cambrian Explosion compelling? I assume mankind is putting a similar pressure on many ecosystems today, so shouldn't we be seeing that kind of evolutionary explosion happening now?

[–] BlemboTheThird 11 points 10 months ago

It is happening now but evolution takes a long time. If there were a ton of adaptations that happened in the next 10,000 years, that would be incredibly fast on an evolutionary timescale

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