Cambrian+Period,+Paleozoic+Era+by+piratehunny877

=**The next unit in our Science class is geology; namely Earth's history around the time life was developing. Each student in the class was required to pick a period in the time from the Precambrian Time and/or Paleozoic, Mesozoic or Cenozoic eras and study the to become experts on them. We then would make idea webs using a program called Inspiration, make a wiki, and present all the data to the class. I chose the Cambrian period from the Paleozoic Era. This period attracted my attention because one: it had all these strange organisms I had never heard of before, that would be quite interesting to learn about (and not to mention be useful in trivia games). Two: during this period there was an explosion of sorts of various sea-life in a relatively short time, which makes me ponder what evidence do they have on how/why this happened and how does it relate to life on Earth today. Lastly, I thought that the Cambrian period would've been fantastic to do a project on because I had never really looked into the subject of invertebrates, since there are more vertebrates today, and knowing about them could serve useful in the future. I will try my best on this project, and I hope it shows what I'm worth! **=

THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD __Before, During And After the Cambrian Period__ To understand one period in Geologic time, it is better to know what happened before and after it also, so you have an all around view and causes and effects to something in the period you are observing. Before the Cambrian Period, the start of the Paleozoic Era, there was the Pre-Cambrian Era. This era is longer than all the eras put together! It is the formation of our beautiful Earth and the beginning of basic life. There was a mass extinction and that is the cue for the Cambrian to initiate right after. The Cambrian Period was the “explosion of life”, when many new forms of organisms came to be, most of which create what animals are today or are still around, astonishingly. The Cambrian finishes off with another mass and extinction and geologic time proceeds with the Ordovician Period. During the Ordovician Period, in two separate sections divided by millions of years apart, the rich marine life dies out. Gondwana heads south and is smothered in glaciers, which cause the water temperature to cool and levels to drop; marine life suffers further. When the glaciers recede, oxygen levels in the water take a sharp plunge! One third of the brachiopods and bryozoans die out, but there are still many trilobites, graptolites and conodant animals. __Abiotic Life in the Cambrian Period__ As it is widely known, the abiotic fundamentally forms the biotic life; as it is the biotic that can, and must adapt to survive. Different abiotic life defines methods of survival, appearance, advantages and disadvantages of species. Learning about abiotic in a different time and/or place can really assist you in getting into the perspective of a trilobite... about 544 to 505 million years ago! It can be a little difficult thinking about Earth when you weren't even born. First off, the continents we know and love today didn't exist! All that land was basically clumped together (or around each other) in a supercontinent named Gondwana. Gondwana's land was mostly made up of the southern continents, some islands in its vicinity were the rest of Europe and Asia that weren't packed int Baltica (which included Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and European Russia), Siberia, and Laurentia (which was made up of mostly North America, including Massachusetts in the southwest of it). All this land was mostly situated in the southern hemisphere, moving even more south over time, shown below in the picture. The climate during the Cambrian Period was the hottest recorded in Earth's history. This is due to most land being in the south and/or close to the equator and flooding due to the warming of the glaciers after the ice age in the Pre-Cambrian Era. This combo, land and water, are both absorbers of heat from the sun, which probably somewhat explains the extreme temperatures in this era. __The Rocks and Landforms of the Cambrian Period__ Earth is always changing and making new things; it is changing now, will change in the future, and has been changing, even sine the Cambrian Period! First of all, marine reefs were plentiful in this period. Where else would the smaller (and not to mention thriving) sea life live? These reefs formed in shallow waters, close to the coasts, and were extremely sensitive to the shifts of the environment (which is also a factor of the mass extinctions). These marine reefs, coincidentally, might’ve helped the evolutional surge because they were exposed to sunlight. Secondly, the Cambrian Period had the most furtive continental movement compared to any other age, so it is responsible for the mountains and such In Australia, Antartica, and Argentina (which explains the presence of volcanic islands; they are like evidence). All this folding, faulting, and crumpling resulted in lasting landforms we have today. __Life on the Cambrian Earth__ In the Cambrian Period, life was sprawling rapidly into existence hence the nickname “Cambrian Explosion. New life forms obviously meant variety in the DNA, revealing new behaviors such as hunting, burrowing into sediment and make complex branching burrows. This was the behavior of most animal life, such as the dominant life forms at the time: brachiopods, trilobites,archaeocyathids, and jawless fish. All of which besides, the fish, were invertebrates, which were more common as the development of bones was only beginning. In fact, jawless fish were the first vertebrates in Earth’s history and had no similar relatives as of the Cambrian, as far as science is concerned. It’s quite obvious that there is no time machine yet, so how’d the scientists make all these discoveries? One of the things they used was fossils, of course! Most Cambrian fossils have been located in the Burgess Shale in Canada such as the Opabinia Regalis and Naraoia Compacta (a trilobite, in other words); it has been the main source of Cambrian fossils. However there are still some other places like the ChengJiang fauna in China, where a Hallucigenia Sparsa (an onychophoran) had been uncovered. Lastly, animals and life in general either have many cells, being multi-cellular, or one cell, being uni-cellular. Below I have rearranged organisms from the Cambrian Period in those respective groups. Multi-cellular:
 * brachiopods
 * echinoderms
 * helicoplacus
 * jawless fish
 * trilobites
 * archaeocyathids
 * wiwixia
 * anomalocaris
 * opabinia
 * pikaia
 * eukaryota

Uni-cellular: Just like fossils, rocks from the Cambrian were left all over the world. There were left in places like Wales, England, (formerly named Cambria by the Romans, giving the period it’s name as it is also the first place fossils were discovered), the Aldan River, the Burgess Shelves, Utah, Marble Mountain, and the White-Inyo Mountains.
 * phylum
 * algae
 * prokaryotes
 * germs
 * different colored algae

Extras:
What I learned during this project More information Bibliography