If all the carbon stored in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere, should the planet then have been too warm to sustain life?
In: Planetary Science
The life on the planet at thay time was simply adapted to the high temperatures.
At first, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere until the first autotrophs evolved (photosynthesizers)
They ate up so much carbon from the atmosphere and produced oxygen. That causes the first ice age (often called snowball Earth) and oxygen was toxic to most life at the time, resulting in the first mass extinction.
Only those who survived the mass extinction would go on to evolve into all life we have seen after that point, on this much cooler Earth. Eventually, it would evolve to use oxygen to its benefit, and the first aerobic life forms were born leading into the Cambrian Period. Oxygen would be so useful that life made huge leaps and bounds during this time. There’s a reason it’s called the Cambrian Explosion.
The first armor (shells) would evolve along side the first weapons (jaws) and it’s not until here thay we have a good fossil record of life
Oxygen levels would remain pretty high until the end of the Mesozoic Era, but most of the carbon in fossil fuels was tucked away during the Carboniferous Period
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