New fascination with Earth’s ‘Boring Billion’
Science News, October 2015Earth’s long history starts with an epic preamble: A collision with a Mars-sized space rock rips into the young planet and jettisons debris that forms the moon. Over the next few billion years, plot twists abound. The oceans form. Life appears. Solar-powered microbes breathe oxygen into the air. Colossal environmental shifts reshape the planet’s surface and drive the evolution of early life.
A feature article on Earth's so-called boring billion, a seemingly uneventful time in the planet's history that's now the setting of a fierce debate between scientists over what delayed the rise of animals: evolution or the environment.