The Mysterious 15 Million Year Gap in Our Evolution - Romer’s Gap
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.พ. 2023
- The Fossil Record provides us an invaluable glimpse into past life on Earth, but it is not always a complete record. One particularly notable and mysterious gap in the evolution of life is known as Romer's Gap, apparently obscuring a key point in the vertebrate transition to life on land. Or does it?
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Sources:
theplosblog.plos.org/2015/04/...
journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/f...
www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-col...
royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romer%2...
www.jstor.org/stable/3143770
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/5143...
www.nature.com/articles/natur...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
The Tournaisian phase of the Carboniferous is interesting for a different reason too, that seems to be the point of time when insects took to the air.
When did they explode in diversity? Pennsylvanian?
Are all winged insects descended from a single individual? Or did it happen several times by parallel evolution?
In answer to both commenter questions: still undetermined. Insect fossils are very rare compared to other animal orders, and there are big gaps in the earlier periods. There isn't even agreement among scientists as to WHAT anatomical structures insect wings even developed from.
Guess that's where the elusive fossils of the flight capable Whatcheeriidae tetrapodomorphs are hiding too...
(Its a joke based on the flight capable, speculative stem tetrapodomorphs in Keenan Taylor' Kaimere.)
@@petergray7576 My guess is exoskeleton or large hairs. Initially useful in attracting mates through pure physical attraction or by signaling with sound or to help regulate body temperature and then eventually growing into far more useful appendages over time. What's amazing are the insects like the butterfly who literally go from crawler to flyer in a short amount of time. How does a creature evolve to produce appendages on demand? So nuts.
Brilliant overview. I'm blown away by just how much information you guys can fit into a 10 minute video without it feeling overstuffed.
What do you think they are the American education system?
Of course they can.
He speaks quite rapidly... 😂
he reused the same pictures and did a weird look to the right and look to the left thing constantly lol
@@clashwithmaehaemeshe9586stop hating and boss up
@@TraphouseTCG ik it just really bothered me for some reason
I just find it really cool that we know enough now to work out where certain fossil bearing strata should be and we can target it in a very proactive way. Paleontology used to be quite reactive or focused on established fossil bearing areas. Paleontology has come a long way.
Which is how Shubin and co. found Tiktaalak
Great movie title: The Tetrapods Strike Back!
We don’t. your stupid for believing what you hear online or get taught in schools. Masons literally want you to believe theories that they know to be false. And they don’t want people to have any excuse before God so they call it a theory but in academia it’s protected like a religion and all falsified evidence used to prove their religion never or rarely ever gets taken out of their constantly updated scriptures. No body has ever dug deep enough for these strata the deepest they dug is like 8 miles and that’s not an archaeological dig is a small hole straight down. You’ve been tricked. Catastrophism is the truth and archaeology won’t allow people to learn about it because It means God was pissed
@@alejandromagnobarrasa9244 Indeed. Good day to you crazy person.
Yeah, now its guesswork........
Having heard about it before reading about it, I thought of it as "roamer's gap", which made sense to me because these were the first vertebrates to roam on land.
Now that I know it's named after Alfred Romer, I still associate it with the visual of the primitive tetrapods roaming about on land.
Of course, with the rhotic R, it could also be "roma's gap", because of the lack of cheese.
A really interesting video. Romer's Gap has always puzzled me; and your video was a delightful reminder of the extraordinary and inspirational Jenny Clack.
Can't wait to see the rest of the South Africa trip! Congrats on your senior year, Ben! Wish I could have got into paleontology, but, sadly I am disabled due to having cancer (in remission) had stage 4 Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and had brain surgery in 2005 and now have a seizure disorder from the scar tissue and 8 ruptured disks in my back from over working myself to keep my family fed and clothed. (Ah well, I still wouldn't change it for the world, maybe a couple of things, but I have had a fun life. A hard life, but I had lots of fun as well.) ❤Stay safe out there Ben and everyone out there! ❤
Your courage inspires us all. May the Force be with you.
@@tonytaskforce3465 Thank you! May the force be with you as well.. Always. Go in peace, Youngling. *Does sign of cross with Jedi mind trick fingers*
@@ZeFroz3n0ne907 youngling? *you know what that means*
@@user-trolololololol No. Are you to tell us?
@@tonytaskforce3465 th-cam.com/video/9qH1gey2aTw/w-d-xo.html
Glad to hear the south Africa series will be continuing but yes your studies come first
An excellent overview. I'm quite proud of Scotland's role in uncovering this mystery & contributing to our global understanding of the ancient world.
While I appreciate the references to Alfred Romer & Jenny Clack, I wish you at least name-dropped the incomparable Stan Wood, the self-taught fossil hunter whose explorations of East Kirkton Quarry in 1984 led to the discovery of "dozens of tetrapods" mentioned in the video. Palaeontology owes a great deal to people like him, who are not traditionally educated or qualified, but nonetheless advanced the field.
Like Mary Anning?
Self-taught fossil hunters, especially in Scotland, play as big a role in the evolution of paleontology as Bagpipers play in Piping.
This video was very well researched and presented. I will look out for more in the near future. Full marks to this young operative in the field and his assistants. From west Ireland.👍
Great video, well done. Appreciate your dedication to providing informative and worthwhile content on Paleontology. Thank you.
you are such an important educational source for me, your voice alone just fills me with intrigue and curiosity. cant explain how grateful i am for your content!
This is a FANTASTIC video! Much to learn and also enjoy from your enthusiasm on the subject matter indeed.
Quite soon after the first land tetrapods appeared and found the ground cold to walk on, the first socks were knitted. You can see a selection of early tetrapod socks here at 7:46
Indeed, it was a symbiotic partnership with a particular spider species that evolved the ability to spin cotton threads. Once the contract was negotiated and signed, tetrapods never looked back, only down at their feet in admiration.
🤣👍
This is great. I've been waiting for something like this for the last couple of years, now.
I don't know which I like more, the gaps that give us room to guess and imagine, the filling in of the gaps that solve the mystery, or the fact that none of the filling-in ever involves the supernatural.
"...the gaps that give us room to guess and imagine..." That is the contents of evolution theory - guess and imagine.
@@jounisuninen Hardly. I get to guess and imagine until the answers are found because I am not an expert. When the evidence is found and presented, then peer reviewed and approved, we have made progress. You cherry-pick statements like a true creationist, but intelligent people see through the creationist fantasy.
@@crankyyankee2475 I think you dont know the difference between adaption and evolution like most of you religious evolutionists. Evolution doesnt exist scientifically and it never will. Just gonna have to wait for that 100 million year peer reviewed study showing a rat turning into a bird....
A great story of how science works, a sucession of scientists collaborating to prove or disprove something,based on evidence and open to peer review,a great way to advance the knowledge of the world ✌️♥️🇬🇧
Wonderful scholarship! I appreciate your excellence. And let's have a cheer for Scotland and Nova Scotia for providing the fossils we crave. Your fine presentation supports the opinion that we still have a lot to learn, about almost everything.
Thank you, very interesting! I learned something new today! So sad that there are (almost?) no carboniferous outcrops in Austria. Such an interesting period.
The glaciers scraped just about all of the Mesozoic off of Michigan. All we have are the primeval tropical sea before the Permian and nothing until the Neogene.
@@stevenschnepp576 In the Austrian alps there's almost all mesozoic...
Einfach mal eine geologische Karte anschauen. Dann wissen Sie, wo in Österreich welche Schichten liegen.
@@norbertjendruschj9121 Danke! Ich bin Österreicher und geologisch bewandert! Aber wo ist in Österreich das Karbon fossilführend aufgeschlossen?
@@kinderblutsaufenderreptiloide
Wenn ich in östereichischer Regionalgeologie bewandert wäre, hätte ich Sie nicht auf Kartenmaterial verweisen müssen.
ABER - ChatGpt weiß doch alles.
Yes, there are Carboniferous fossils found in Austria. The Carboniferous period lasted from about 359 to 299 million years ago and was characterized by the emergence of diverse land plant and animal life. Austria has a rich fossil record from this period, with several important fossil sites.
One of the most famous Carboniferous fossil sites in Austria is the Hagenberg Limestone quarry, located in Upper Austria. This quarry contains well-preserved fossils of marine animals, including crinoids, brachiopods, and trilobites. Other Carboniferous fossil sites in Austria include the Hallstatt Limestone quarry, which has yielded fossils of fish, and the Gosau Group, which contains fossils of both marine and terrestrial animals.
Overall, the Carboniferous fossils found in Austria provide important insights into the evolution of life during this period, including the development of complex ecosystems on land and in the sea.
If any of your Uni friends are doing the wonderful illustrations you are showing, let them know I absolutely love them. They should think about creating a digital download of coloring books from their drawings. I think they could make a little money on the side to help with school.
I simply love your channel.
And happy that you are still at it.
Thank you Ben. A fascinating post. Much appreciated. Keep it up.
Thank you so much for all you do. I've been watching your channel for a long time and find you endearing and highly informative.
I really hope that I have the ability to develop a friend group with people like you in it!
I did enjoy this, I always learn something new when I watch your videos! Love the channel! Been a sub for 4-5 years now and I enjoy everything you produce. Keep up the amazing wor...
(😆7DOS Stopping short joke. But seriously, I love the content you release! ❤)
From Dave in Alaska!
Just for fun: "The Enormous Egg"
Old old children's book, I still have my copy and still enjoy it about every 10 years.
Chicken lays an enormous egg. Hatches. Triceratops.
Well, chickens and dinosaurs are related right?
Slightly more useful: The Atlas mountains in N.E. Africa, the northern Appalachians in U.S., and mountains in Scotland were originally part of one mountain range. Then Pangea broke up, the continents moved apart. One of my favorite pieces of trivia.
Retired librarian
P.S. I enjoyed your vid! Subscribed.
I got some Trivia for you,
__________________
Q. The Native North American cosmopolitan, traditional, Indian Rain dance 🌧 - was quite *Effective.* According to the indigenous oral Histories, And of course it's widely spread use. WHY DID [IT[ WORK ???
> _Final Jeopardy_ 🎶 Music!
A. Because they danced every night until it eventually rained..
Love the channel. Always interesting and well reasoned.
You were able to explain quite well the problem at hand.
It is a fact that a lot of finds made during excavations and other research is left lying in archives and not studied and recorded properly until many years later, if ever. I wonder what "new" information would be found if all museums were to finish all the records...
Thank you for an interesting and informative video!
You make a great point! I wonder if museums and researchers could somehow post visual and stratigraphic data records of all of their finds so they would be available to the world's researchers even if the owners did not have the resources to analyse their finds
Great drawings Hamzah!
Great topic. This video was very interesting and enjoyed learning about the detective work to solve this question.
Thanks for this show; very interesting !
Open minds close gaps in knowledge. Ignorance makes chasms.
Very interesting, thankyou. With the tiny, tiny cross section of actual life that fossilises and the tiny cross section of that we have analysed. Its amazing how much info we extract or infer, they must be very broad strokes even then. Good luck with your studies.
VERT exciting to learn about this period! Thank you for filling in this gap in my understanding.
Thanks for covering, and for all your fantastic videos of late, really looking forward to more boneheads and the continuation of the SA adventure.
With the gap, I’d always imagined that unless there’s a decline or something unusual happening to creatures prior to a gap (like getting smaller or larger) and a rapid radiation following it from a reduced number of groups, it’s more likely to be preservation or discovery bias.
When I moved into a new build home in the British midlands, I did look at the geology report for the site which mentions a soil made up of oak from the forest of Arden, a clay layer from a Pleistocene lake and below that is mudstone from early-Triassic and late-Permian. Given that some maps show the British Isles having been even closer to western Russia and the location of the modern Dvina, it’s very tempting to imagine a Walking With Monsters fantasy having played out beneath our feet but sad that the conditions that turned the desert into the characteristic red deposits don’t seem to hold clues about the animals the once could have travelled over the sands
4:38 What a fitting name for such a derpy animal
thank you for the information. Loved it.
Excellent piece of work, thank you guys.
Really cool!
Thanks!
Decent, nice to see my home province mentioned. I've gone fossil hunting there
Nova scotia? When I was there, I found Hylonomus footprints on the beach
Amazing that fossil finds from a few site visits were able to fill in the gaps in the evolution of life after the Devonian Period
Thank you I did learn a lot from this presentation.
I how you do well in finalising your degree. I look forward to hearing that you have been accepted for further studies, and for a job as a tutor.
That gap is when the aliens came to Earth.
Jokes aside. I hope that we find more fossil deposits in places like the Himalayas, Antarctica, Greenland, and sorts.
Predators, or Engineer Xenomorphs?
@@MrCantStopTheRobot Alf
That green tetrapod in the thumbnail cracks me up 🤣
Pederpes - its at the Melbourne museum. Very derpy indeed
@@graphite2786 Appropriate name!
Great work on Romer's it fills a gap in my knowledge of vetebrate evolution
I love your channel. You're really doing god's work bringing this stuff to the layperson.
Pederpes definitely was a derp.
20 seconds here after it got posted. I’ll just watch it
Interesting to see you here
@@1Nobody1 my account got terminated idk why
@@SnubbyDaArtist I wasn't talking about that but ok
Well done! (I guess!)
No one cares
That was cool, thanks Been!
Thanks so much. I have never even heard of the Blue Beach Fossil Museum, and it's less than a 2-hour drive away. I'll be checking this area out in the spring.
Hi Khaled, We open mid-April. Look forward to your visit.
Wouldn’t the first vertebrate on land just be an aquatic walking fish?
One that is a water creature but sometimes walks on land for things like traversing to water bodies, eating detritus washed up on shore, deparasiting, escaping predators, warming their cold blood with solar energy, etc?
Sure, but what he video is actually talking about is the first vertebrates actually be able to walk as we know it instead of just dragging itself.
No? You think legs just magically appeared?
@@Sara3346 Isn’t dragging yourself just walking 🚶🏿♂️?
@@adamplentl5588 The images and the paper’s unspoken ❌🗣 assumptions seem to suggest one ☝️ of:
🔘 That happened
🔘 Tetrapods 🦎 walked under water 💧 until they were good enough to stay out of the water 💧 all the time when not spawning
We still have so much to learn. Will we ever know for sure? I don't think we will. It will be forever hypotheses and educated speculation. Fascinating arguments though.
We will never know anything for sure unless we can witness it with our own eyes which is of course impossible in most situations. All we can do is theorize based on the scant evidence that remains and hope it stays basically true until something comes along to show us otherwise. The Earth goes through so many physical changes over the millennia that many clues are destroyed or locked away in the process. Those mysteries and uncertainties do keep us going though which is better than knowing all and having nothing left to look forward to.
Idk the argument for sampling bias seems quite solid. Many such cases of poor sampling have been found and paleontologists constantly try to account for it.
Yessss a 10 minute video
A fascinating study, thanks for that!
Clearly, evolution stopped for 15.000.000 years 'cause the lime-green CÜNUP BOI featured on the profile image of this vid. was so awesome and wholesome that the entirety of Creation stopped to admire it.
Rather than Oxygen levels during this period, I wonder about the Carbon Dioxide levels? It was suggested the Carboniferous was caused by high levels of CO2, because CO2 is often the liming factor in physiological plant growth. Even with normal O2, a raised CO2 will give air breathers a problem, especially on the ground. Climbing trees would have been a new selective advantage.
High CO2 is even more devastating to aquatic organisms - because it makes water acidic and dissolves skeletons and shells.
Seems unsurported by the fact its probably just due to sampling bias.
Great video! JustI just sort of stumbled across this, and as paleontology is not one of those fields of study that's regularly near the top of my interest list, I almost passed it by. So glad I didn't! I learned an awful lot, and now I have many questions and potential paths of inquiry to investigate.
Thanks a lot. :)
Well done! Thanks!
Isn't it a weird little coincident, that both the places, where they found evidence are named after the Scotts? I mean what gives?
And if you really want to double down, there is a theory, named after a guy who is named after Rome but it's troubled by the existence of Scottish stuff, just like... well the Romans
All those things could be named after what ever... kinda weird.
It's a coincidence. Nova Scotia happens to mean "New Scotland" and the two land masses were once much closer together back in that period, when the continent of Gondwana still existed.
@@Kleineganz laurasia*
gondwana is the southern continent with south america africa india australia and antarctica
What do we call it then? Romer's gasp?
All the best for your senior year. Hope you can keep going in post-grad or some other capacity!
Awesome video! That graphic at the end during the credits needs to be made into a necklace pendant 😁.
Well then, so much for the young Earth creationists' notion of the great flood mixing up all the remains of the dinosaurs and depositing them all over the place.
YECs are such a zany bunch 😂 they really took their religion, thought “hmm, this doesn’t contradict science enough” and were off to the races.
@@brianzulauf2974 Faithless protestants, what God would oppose truth?
@@brianzulauf2974
Well, Piltdown Pete and his “Omega Point” thesis are a much more bizarre superstition.
@@DatPiffy
Are you familiar with Fulong Gong’s anti-evolutionIST thesis? It’s an interesting position from a Buddhist sect, but evolutionism is fundamentally antihuman.
Guppies are the strongest animal
still better than religions and their endless gaps and holes
Nice video! I am really fascinated by early tetrapod history. There is similar gap in middle permian, fossils of tetrapods from this time are also rare. And even more fascinating are ichnofossils from middle devonian, which were apparently made by terrestrial tetrapod (all tetrapods known from bones are only from late devonian and they are all aquatic).
great video !
You think Romer's gap is bad? How about all the gaps in arthropoda. Like how there is no known intermediate between crustaceans and hexapods. Or the transition from marine chelicerates to terrestrial arachnids. Or the proto forms of various insect orders
That's around the time a lot of earth's coal was made. I know that means there was a lot of detritus on the forest floor. Makes me wonder if there was too much detritus to allow for proper fossilization? There would be tons of bacteria & fungi in that. Come to think of it that would also explain why millipedes secret so much anti fungal secretions. 🤔
Coal is by definition a fossil and those lowland forrests aren't terrible for fossilisation either from having anoxic bottom waters.
Very interesting. Thank you!
Good job guys 👍
I used to think that watching Star Wars every week would make a difference in the future …
I thought that of Star Trek but instead that was rewritten into a future I'm not as fond of.
@@wwiiinplastic4712 have you tried Godzilla ⁉️
@@treystephens6166 Mostly the older stuff.
@@wwiiinplastic4712 yeah I like 1954-1995 Godzilla!
Take that creationists!
Woot. Always neat to run into a random Nova Scotia reference in paleo videos. We learn next to nothing here in Nova Scotia about our own ancient fauna. :( We basically hear that the Joggins formation has a large quantiy of fossils, but that's about it. And I don't think I've ever even heard of Blue Beach. :/
Epic! very interesting
I live close to the site in Nova Scotia. I will have to pay more attention during my beach walks
Not just animals but plant evolution had some bearing as well. Plant diversity brought about more plants and wherefore oxygen. Volcanic activity also brought a large amount of ash in regional areas which helped the plants.
I live near Blue Beach, been there lots of times. Pretty easy to find basic fossils around there.
Very interesting. Have always been pretty sketchy about early tetrapod evolution.
"Can I live on land"? "No". "Why not"?
"THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZER"!!!
Oooh, good stuff
Thanks for the excellent informative video.
Where does Tiktaalik fit into Romer's Gap?
Tiktaalik lived in the early Devonian period, so nowhere near the supposed Romer's Gap.
An excellent example of parsimony in regards to science, as this was one of the cases where the simplest explanation (poor sampling) was the correct one.
Good video!
yooo im also in my final year of uni. we'll get through it and graduate soon
5:20 was that the fossil cliffs in Joggins, NS, Canada? I found Hylonomus tracks there back in 2020
Interesting video
Wish the pictures on your coffee mugs looked like y’all. Shows great! Who inherits the show after you graduate?
Very Nice
Really nice drawings.
I wish It was possible to invent a piece of technology that could point out where fossil's are. Like you carry it, it scans the location and theirs a LCD screen that highlights regions of the video feed of your surroundings where the fossil's are in the environment. Think of how much archeology would flourish with a device/Tool like this.
Good luck on your finals. A very busy time for you.
I had no idea this gap existed, nor that it was being filled just half an hour down the road!
I always give the waking fish as an example of change over time.
Dating can be so skewed by radiation and isotopes that occur, I can't wait till we have better forms of dating. Good vidjéo sir🤙
Handsome, brainy, informative.
An interesting idea I came across reading about the Pennsylvanian period: that prior to the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, the most terrestrial tetrapods (amniotes) were kept small by competition with/predation by giant arthropods in drier environments, and that after the rainforest collapse & drop in oxygen killed the giant arthropods, amniotes grew in size. This is rather contrary to the conventional view that it was “lack of vertebrate competition” that allowed giant bugs in the first place. Any thoughts? Seems like an interesting topic for a video!
Thanks for an interesting video. I’m a layperson, so sometimes I get confused. Today I was mistaking the Devonian with the Permian. 🤦🏻♀️ (wrong extinction event…)
Once I got that figured out, the video was so interesting. I have wondered why five (and fewer) digits made it to the present, but not any vertebrates with more than five. Just bad luck, or is there an evolutionary reason to select for fewer digits?
I’m also curious how the eye was evolving during the transition to land. My guess is that finer visual acuity would be selected for. And probably that certain wavelengths would be useful to land creatures that aren’t useful in the water…?
I don’t know whether DNA studies can narrow down when our RGB visual molecules came along, but it would be an interesting topic for a video.
Interesting thoughts about the eye. It would have to adapt both to UV light, air (dryness) and colour. This time, when the first animals evolved to land animals, is one of the most interesting, I think. :-)
@@mayday6916 Exactly. But another very interesting transition was from single cells to multicellular animals. Did muscles and nerves evolve together? How did light sensing organs develop? Circulatory system? So many steps had to happen to lead to even the most basic multicellular animals like Cnidaria.
@Nina Lehman multicellularity evolved several times . There’s an recent experiment involving yeast becoming multicellular. (snowflake yeast) Also in bacteria they do something called quorum sensing where the bacteria in the same species take on different roles when layers build up. . This is sort of a proto- multicellularity)
5:17 kind of a cool coincidince that the two sites were Scotland & Nova Scotia(New Scotland)
I haven't been following you consistently, but do you know what path you will take after you finish your studies?
One of the fascinating things about all this knowledge are the time spans we talk about. A million years here ten million years there. And this about 300 million years ago. Deep time that is utterly foreign to the human mind.
Because it is. b.s. that is why.
Deep time is BS to ignorant people because depending where you live if you really look at your local territory you can see evidence for it . I live in NYC and I can see the glacial deposits that left hills all over Long Island from the ice ages . And the glaciers scraped giant boulders flat as well . Only ignorant people deliberately ignore evidence.
I never even knew the species at 4:34, but I instantly thought of it as 'derpy'
Fascinating. M.