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50.0%ANMag Issue 25 Global Awareness
Fourth Day of Creation
By Ali Sadeeq, Staff Writer
Kano, Nigeria − Paleozoic Era (period, epoch or era), 550-570 million years ago:
Early in this period, the enormous expansion in the diversity and complexity of life occurred, and numerous and varied forms representing full-fledge members of almost every major animal group we know today first appeared during the Cambrian explosion. Almost all the different body plans found in animals today i.e. the way an animal is designed with heads, legs, rear end, claws, tentacles and antennae also originated during this era. Though most of the early complex life forms of the Cambrian explosion lived in the sea, no land animals were known and there is no indication of protozoan life.
God says: - Q24:45 "And has created every animal from water, Of them are some that creep on their bellies".
The marine faunas generally swim and their swimming is like creeping on their bellies. Scientific evidence has proven that all animals' origins were from water, and the early living creatures were living in water because in the early Paleozoic era, land was not sufficiently protected from the ultraviolet rays which are destructive to nucleic acid and exposure on land can kill any organism in minutes. As such life is still restricted to oceans at which depth all the ultraviolet rays would have been absorbed, visible light would still filter through to allow plant photosynthesis. Enough atmospheric oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere due to plant photosynthesis and photo dissociation of water vapor and cosmic rays converted the oxygen (02) into Ozone (03), which eventually formed Ozonosphere (the Ozone layer) that became a protective shield against radiation. This gave the opportunity for plants and animals to colonize land.
It is important to understand the geologic history of the earth, as most readers are lay in the sciences and begin to wonder how on earth could scientists with confidence pinpoint the ages of fossils and events millions of years ago, considering the facts that mankind as a whole existed in only a tiny fraction of the times being mentioned. Let us examine two things that will clarify our sense of history.
Carbon Dating
God in his infinite wisdom has scattered clocks in nature and living beings to record times.
a) Radiocarbon
Radiocarbon (C14), a radioisotope of carbon, is produced in the upper atmosphere by the bombardment of Nitrogen by cosmic rays, neutrons, and it reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. In that form (as CO2), it enters into all living things and all materials exchangeable with atmospheric carbon dioxide including carbonates in seawater. Upon death of an organism, the radiocarbon diminishes by its own radioactive disintegration at a known rate. Therefore, by determining accurately the loss that has taken place from an organism since burial time, the age of the organism after burial can be computed.
b) Fluorine content
Fluorine content of the fossil bone increase with Geological age, by a process of ionic interchange, as this element is slowly taken up from the soil and becomes fixed in bony tissues in the form of a very stable compound, Fluorapalite. The amount of fluorine in a fossil bone thus increases with time and gives an indication of the period over which it has been in position in a particular deposit.
c) Others
Other methods for estimating the age of the universe are based on the study of certain natural radioactive elements: Uranium-238, Uranium-235, Thorium-232, Lead-206, Lead-207, and Lead-208 and their decaying products. Starting with the present abundance of those atomic species and extrapolating back in time, using known decay constants reveals that in the past there were smaller and smaller amounts of those isotopes and larger and larger amounts of radioactive elements. For example, if you take a bucketful of ice and keep it at a known temperature, after one hour, it would melt. Then after ten hours, you will know that ten cups must have melted, as you already know that one hour produces one cup. Through these methods the earth was estimated to come into existence about five billion years and emergence of life on earth to have been between 3-3.5 billion years ago. It is also known that man came into existence recently, in the last part of Cenozoic era.
Fossilization
Fossilization is the ingenuous method God preserved for us to enable us a peep at our ancestry and history. As every one knows, bone is the hardest part in living beings and also takes the longest time to disintegrate. Skeletons are the most unique of features that differentiate species. In the human species, the skeleton of a black man will be identical to that of a white man. Fossil records, (the remains, impressions or trace of animals of a former geological age found in the earth crust or strata) provide in a number of cases (e.g. man, horse) direct demonstration of succession of closely graded intermediate types that form a temporal sequence. The fossil record is the most reliable evidence of evolution and the majority of accessible deposits of fossils of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras were formed in Deltas, shallow coal swamps, and shallow epicontinental seas and in linear subsiding basins. From the very recent past have come frozen carcasses of mammoths (giant elephants that are now extinct) in Siberia, hair of ground sloths from a cave in Mexico, preserved insects in the Baltic region, and soft-bodied worms in British Columbia. The discovery of such fossils from various locations around the Globe established beyond doubt the idea of evolution.
The fossils of plants and animals that completely disintegrated are what become now the most important mineral resource to man, Petroleum. Carbon dating and fossil records gave us a great insight into our distant past. In the fourth day, the Paleozoic era, we have the early ancestors of land plants and land animals thriving in the oceans, as land is not yet fully protected by an ozonosphere, which is in the process of accumulating. Around 408 million years ago, we saw the formation of new chains of mountains in different parts of the world. The first vertebrates appeared in the oceans, like the early fishes that have no jawbone. Volcanic eruptions subsidized around 435 million years ago, and the oceans withdrew as marine life development accelerated. Leafless plants are the first form of life to colonize land in this planet around this time.
Day Five Mesozoic Era (period, epoch or era) 225-130 million years:
With the sufficient formation of the ozonosphere, terrestrial development accelerated. Both plants and animals colonized land.
Q24:45 "And God has created every animal from water; of them are some that creep on their bellies, some that walk on two legs and some that walk on four. God creates what he wills for he has power over all things".
From marine to terrestrial life, the development of continental deposits gave us a clear picture of the colonization of land by marine faunas and the subsequent radiation of amphibians and reptiles. From creeping on their bellies, environmental changes, due to adaptation, necessitate some animals to develop legs for easy mobility on land. Though there are some land animals that retain the "creeping on bellies" mode of mobility like worms, snakes, and other insects, the majority of higher animals on land developed legs, which are in pairs. Oceans flooded, covering most of the present-day Asia and Europe. The first deserts emerged, which are the result of the constant mach of the sun over the two tropics for over four billion years. Swamps and coal forests also developed with overall increase in the global temperature. This is the era of the dinosaurs, as they dominate the planet. Some of them even developed wings and took to the sky. About 180 million years ago, the first placental mammals appeared and the temperature cooled again concentrating the ice caps in the Polar Regions. Insects were not left behind, because the spread of flowering plants enhanced their survival. A great event that is to play a great role in the proliferation and differentiation of species occurred towards the tail end of this period. This event is Continental drift.