According to what is said there, the planet had five extinctions that wiped life off the face of the earth. One of them, exactly the second, was repeated 15 million years later. It was the extinction of the Devon.
Every extinction had its own peculiarities. The most famous for its consequences, however, was that of the tertiary chalk. It’s the time when dinosaurs went extinct.
The Extinction of the Devonians was chronologically the second and occurred about 370 million years ago. Although on this occasion the catastrophe was repeated 15 million years later. Only a few fossil remains remain from this time.
The planet was very different from today
The origin of the Devonian term was a reddish sediment that formed when Europe collided with North America. The sediment study started in Devon, England.
The first Devonian event was called Kellwasser and the next Hangenberg. The planet was completely different as the supercontinent called Gondwana gradually leaned north.
During this time another supercontinent was formed, which was called Laurasia or Euroamerica. It consisted of the union or collision of what is now Northern Europe, North America, Russia and Greenland.
Devonian properties
This period in the life of the earth is also known as the age of the fish. The supercontinents lacked life, only plants grew in the water and on the coasts and there were some animals.
The oceans of the Devonian period, on the other hand, were full of life, both algae and fish had multiplied for millions of years. There were also microorganisms that were older. Giant reefs could also be found. They lived in corals that were lonely and a variety of sponges.
Sharks or their ancestors, the cartilage and the placoderms, ruled in the seas. Recently, a fossil with a head similar to that of a crocodile called Tiktaalik was found in the part of the Arctic that belongs to Canada.
The found specimens’ fins were strong and spiked so that they could be used in shallow waters and even on dry land. It has two holes at the end of the mouth, indicating that it was used to breathe air.
Nature is beginning to reforest the continent
As the period neared its half, the first forests and the first fish with lungs appeared on earth. The center of the continent begins to be forested with the first plants that could produce firewood. The roots began to elongate and could exceed one meter deep.
The first four-legged friends appear with their toes on their legs. There are no fossil remains of them, there are only footprints. These traces tell that these animals spent much of their time in the water.
By the end of the period, it is not known for certain what happened. It is believed that lack of ice and oxygen has killed almost 90% of marine and land life.
