Planet Earth

A brief history of life on earth takes you from the first organisms to the advent of writing (3,200 years ago) with a lot of stops on the way

Planet Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. In that time, the planet we live on has changed many times: Oceans have formed, the continents have formed and continue to move across the surface of the Earth. Over billions of years, water and oxygen appeared. Then, 4 billion years ago the tiny spark of life occurred; these microscopic organisms had only one cell and were very primitive. From the evolution of humans to the present day, takes up a tiny amount of time in the history of planet Earth.

Palaeontologists find out about the history of life on Earth by studying all kinds of evidence. They have found fossilised footprints from dinosaurs and even the marks left on the sea bed by trilobites, 400 million years ago.

All the evidence helps scientists tell the story of how our planet was formed and how life on Earth developed and how humans came to exist. Geologists study the rocks and the formation of the planet this information allows the Palaeontologists to place the fossils they find in the right time. To help with the timeline of events, the age of the Earth has been broken down into Periods that help scientists and Palaeontologists talk about when things happened.

Early Life

What did an ammonite look like and how did it move? See an ammonite fossil come back to life as it would have been in early Jurassic seas over 60 million years ago

The very earliest life on Earth was so small you would need a microscope to see it. These tiny cells evolved over hundreds of millions of years into animals that you might recognise now. Animal life started in the sea in the Cambrian period around 500 million years ago when thousands of species of creatures filled the oceans. This period of time is called the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ because this is the time that planet Earth exploded with life.

Fossilisation

Watch a T.Rex as it dies and over millions of years, is turned from a fully fleshed animal into a skeleton and then finally a fossil

Dinosaurs and many other creatures that lived on Earth became extinct around 65 million years ago. As they died, most of the bodies of these animals would have decomposed (rotted away) and disappeared.

A small number of these animals died in places and conditions that meant their skeletons have been preserved for millions of years. We call these remains fossils. Most fossils are found in sedimentary rock; rock that’s formed from the dirt (like sand or clay) that’s fallen and settled(sediment) on the bottom of a sea or a lake. Over millions of years these sediments become rock like sandstone or limestone.

From Fossil to Fuel

Watch a plant fossil transform into the living plant as it was over 200 million years ago. Reverse the process to see how plants formed layered fossils that over millions of years turn into coal

The first plants on land probably appeared on Earth around 470 million years ago. Fossils show that the plants that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago looked very much like the plants
we recognise today. The seas would have been full of all kinds of fish and animals
such as ammonites and early, primitive sharks. Many of the plants and animals
alive at this time became the coal and oil that we burn today.

Although coal has been burnt as a fuel for thousands of years, it helped change the world during the Industrial Revolution when coal was burned to power the steam engines and factories in the early 19th Century. Coal is formed out of layers of fossilised plants that died around 300 million years ago. The carbon dioxide (CO₂) that the plants absorbed was trapped inside the structure of the plants. When we burn coal the carbon dioxide (CO₂) is released into the air which warms the planet.

Oil is made up of the tiny creatures (organisms) and algae that lived millions of years ago in the sea that died and slowly fell to the soft seabed called silt. Over millions of years, the silt became rock and the fossilised remains became oil. Like coal, the carbon dioxide (CO₂) absorbed by the prehistoric organisms is released when we burn it, warming our atmosphere. Oil is also used to make the plastics that are everywhere, taking many years to break down once we have used them.

Jurassic Depths

Watch a Plesiosaur from the early Jurassic period swimming on the page. See how it uses its paddles like a turtle and its neck to steer through the water

When we think of prehistoric animals we almost always imagine a Tyrannosaurus Rex or maybe a Velociraptor. But what about the amazing animals that swam in the seas millions of years ago? They would have been just as impressive and just as deadly.

The Plesiosaurus was a predator, eating other fish and animals that shared the Jurassic seas. They would have eaten ammonites, fish and belemnites. They would have been able to swim using their four paddles and may have used their long neck to steer through the water.

Tyrant Lizard King

Observe a scanned model of ‘Stan’ the fossilised T-Rex skeleton on display at the University of Manchester, Tap to see how the flesh and skin transforms the dinosaur into the familiar Tyrant Lizard king

This fossilised skeleton is from one of the largest and most complete fossilised T-Rex skeletons in the world. Known as ‘Stan’ (after the amateur Paleontologist who discovered it, Stan Sacrison), it was discovered in Hell Creek, South Dakota in 1987. After 30,000 hours of work he was finally fully excavated and assembled for display. The skeleton has been duplicated several times and a full cast of the skeleton is on display in the Museum of Manchester. The replica is so accurate that it can also be used for scientific study.

Feathered Friends

Was the Tyrannosaurus Rex covered in feathers? It’s likely that it did have some feathers, perhaps when it was young with fewer feathers as an older dinosaur. Point your device at the T. Rex to see what it may have looked like with feathers

Did dinosaurs have feathers? The answer is almost certainly yes! Palaeontologists have found evidence that all dinosaurs may have had feathers. This is very different to the images we see in books and in films. What would the movie Jurassic Park have looked like with feathered dinosaurs?

Extinction

Watch as a huge asteroid breaks through the Earth’s atmosphere, 66 million years ago, smashing into the earth and setting into motion an extinction event that resulted in the loss of around 76% of all species including most of the dinosaurs

Million years ago, the Earth was full of life, from the warm seas swarming with creatures, to the sky full of insects and flying reptiles. On the ground, dinosaurs and mammals populated the forests and plains. Where are they now? It may surprise you to know that the birds you see now are actually dinosaurs! Some of their ancestors are alive today and have evolved into many of the mammals, birds and reptiles that we are familiar with -they are the direct descendants of the incredible animals that lived over 65 million years ago.

Scientists know that 66 million years ago something happened. A comet or an asteroid the size of a mountain, travelling at 40,000 miles an hour smashed into the Earth. A huge fireball brighter than the sun lit up the land and skies. Within seconds the heat and explosion wiped out everything within a 700 mile radius. Huge rocks would have been sent flying to the edge of space, falling across the Earth, killing more and starting fires. A giant tsunami hundreds of metres high raced across the oceans. The skies darkened as the ash and debris from the explosion hung in the atmosphere, cutting out light, changing the environment and causing global warming that eventually wiped out 80% of remaining life.

Humans

See how the shape and size of our eyebrows, jaw and brain make us what we are today. The AR compares the skulls of Afarensis and a modern human skull to show how we have evolved into Homo Sapiens

About 4 billion years ago an ape like creature evolved in Eastern Africa. Australopithecus was very different to other animals. It could walk on two feet and even more importantly, its brain was more developed and so it could solve problems better than other primates (like monkeys and apes) and survive more easily. Australopithecus soon spread across Eastern and Northern Africa.

There are no Australopithecus alive now but they evolved into the species Homo which eventually evolved into us, Homo Sapiens. Scientists have discovered that one of the important ways we evolved was by developing smooth eyebrows! Big bulging eyebrows like those on Australopithecus weren’t very easy to move around. Humans communicate a lot using our eyebrows. Try having a chat with your friends without moving your eyebrows. You will see that although you can understand what they are saying, it’s hard to see if they are serious, laughing or even telling the truth! Smooth eyebrows allowed us to communicate more easily with one another.