A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology

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The earliest evidence for the angiosperms evolving flowers is during the Cretaceous period, some 20million years later (132Ma). [178] Extinctions

The first true mammals evolved in the shadows of dinosaurs and other large archosaurs that filled the world by the late Triassic. The first mammals were very small, and were probably nocturnal to escape predation. Mammal diversification truly began only after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. [185] By the early Paleocene the Earth recovered from the extinction, and mammalian diversity increased. Creatures like Ambulocetus took to the oceans to eventually evolve into whales, [186] whereas some creatures, like primates, took to the trees. [187] This all changed during the mid to late Eocene when the circum-Antarctic current formed between Antarctica and Australia which disrupted weather patterns on a global scale. Grassless savanna began to predominate much of the landscape, and mammals such as Andrewsarchus rose up to become the largest known terrestrial predatory mammal ever, [188] and early whales like Basilosaurus took control of the seas. [ citation needed] The discovery that a kind of RNA molecule called a ribozyme can catalyze both its own replication and the construction of proteins led to the hypothesis that earlier life-forms were based entirely on RNA. [80] They could have formed an RNA world in which there were individuals but no species, as mutations and horizontal gene transfers would have meant that the offspring in each generation were quite likely to have different genomes from those that their parents started with. [81] RNA would later have been replaced by DNA, which is more stable and therefore can build longer genomes, expanding the range of capabilities a single organism can have. [82] Ribozymes remain as the main components of ribosomes, the "protein factories" of modern cells. [83]Bhattacharya, Debashish; Medlin, Linda (1998). "Algal Phylogeny and the Origin of Land Plants". Plant Physiology. 116 (1): 9–15. doi: 10.1104/pp.116.1.9. PMC 1539170. (PDF) Mantle convection, the process that drives plate tectonics, is a result of heat flow from the Earth's interior to the Earth's surface. [56] :2 It involves the creation of rigid tectonic plates at mid-oceanic ridges. These plates are destroyed by subduction into the mantle at subduction zones. During the early Archean (about 3.0Ga) the mantle was much hotter than today, probably around 1,600°C (2,910°F), [57] :82 so convection in the mantle was faster. Although a process similar to present-day plate tectonics did occur, this would have gone faster too. It is likely that during the Hadean and Archean, subduction zones were more common, and therefore tectonic plates were smaller. [1] :258 [58] Kump, Lee R. (2010). The earth system. James F. Kasting, Robert G. Crane (3rded.). San Francisco: Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-321-59779-3. OCLC 268789401. At first, the released oxygen was bound up with limestone, iron, and other minerals. The oxidized iron appears as red layers in geological strata called banded iron formations that formed in abundance during the Siderian period (between 2500Ma and 2300Ma). [2] :133 When most of the exposed readily reacting minerals were oxidized, oxygen finally began to accumulate in the atmosphere. Though each cell only produced a minute amount of oxygen, the combined metabolism of many cells over a vast time transformed Earth's atmosphere to its current state. This was Earth's third atmosphere. [113] :50–51 [63] :83–84, 116–117

Battistuzzi, F. U.; Hedges, S. B. (2009-02-01). "A Major Clade of Prokaryotes with Ancient Adaptations to Life on Land". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 26 (2): 335–343. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msn247. ISSN 0737-4038. PMID 18988685. Belbruno, E.; Gott, J. Richard III (2005). "Where Did The Moon Come From?". The Astronomical Journal. 129 (3): 1724–1745. arXiv: astro-ph/0405372. Bibcode: 2005AJ....129.1724B. doi: 10.1086/427539. S2CID 12983980. The ability to control fire probably began in Homo erectus (or Homo ergaster), probably at least 790,000years ago [192] but perhaps as early as 1.5Ma. [126] :67 The use and discovery of controlled fire may even predate Homo erectus. Fire was possibly used by the early Lower Paleolithic ( Oldowan) hominid Homo habilis or strong australopithecines such as Paranthropus. [193] A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. [194]

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Cooper, Geoffrey M. (2000). "The Origin and Evolution of Cells". The Cell: A Molecular Approach (2nded.). Sinauer Associates. Segré, D.; Ben-Eli, D.; Deamer, D. & Lancet, D. (February–April 2001). "The Lipid World" (PDF). Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 31 (1–2): 119–45. Bibcode: 2001OLEB...31..119S. doi: 10.1023/A:1006746807104. PMID 11296516. S2CID 10959497 . Retrieved 2008-09-01.

a b c Hopfe, Lewis M. (1987) [1976]. "Characteristics of Basic Religions". Religions of the World (4thed.). New York: MacMillan Publishing Company. pp.17, 17–19. ISBN 978-0-02-356930-2. Morbidelli, A.; Chambers, J.; Lunine, Jonathan I.; Petit, J.M.; Robert, F.; Valsecchi, G.B.; Cyr, K.E. (2000). "Source regions and timescales for the delivery of water to the Earth". Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 35 (6): 1309–1320. Bibcode: 2000M&PS...35.1309M. doi: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2000.tb01518.x.

Finally, Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) used Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy to capture spectra of all the objects in the entire field of view at once. Among the results, it proves that one of the galaxies has a mirror image. George Dvorsky (November 13, 2013). "The world's first big cats came from Asia, not Africa". Io9.com . Retrieved 2016-01-10.