The Ages of the Earth Chapter Three - Ordovician by WillemSvdMerwe, literature
Literature
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Three - Ordovician
THE AGES OF THE EARTH CHAPTER THREE ORDOVICIAN The Cambrian was followed by the Ordovician period, which started about 485 million years ago. It was a tumultuous time. Meteorites, remnants of the great chunks of space rock from which the Earth and other planets were formed, kept colliding at a rate 100 times more frequent than at present. The continents were shifting, through plate tectonics, and a great continent, Gondwana, formed in the south, with several other smaller masses around it and to the north. Around each continental area, a different suite of seabed-living creatures developed, leading to a lot of diversity. There was also diversity in time, as conditions changed. Whereas at the start of the Ordovician, global climates were very hot, towards the end of the Ordovician, the continent of Gondwana had drifted over the South Pole, which restricted the effect of warm ocean currents so that ice started to cover the South Polar area. Sea levels fell dramatically as the
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Two: Cambrian by WillemSvdMerwe, literature
Literature
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Two: Cambrian
CAMBRIAN The Phanerozoic started with an event called the Cambrian Explosion. This happened just about 540 million years ago. Suddenly at that point we find lots and lots of fossils of a vast diversity of multicellular living organisms! It's amazing how much better living things were apparently preserved from this point onward. Part of it is that some of the new animals had hard shells, exoskeletons or other bodyparts, that preserved better. This is due to using minerals, mainly calcium, and precipitating them into hard parts. It is possible that the Cambrian saw an increase in the amount of calcium and other minerals dissolved in the ocean waters, which could then be absorbed by animals and plants (which were just oceanic algae, including the first large seaweeds, at that point). Some of the Ediacarian fauna appear to have hard parts, but in the Cambrian, we have many, and the hard parts often encompassed most of their bodies, preserving virtually their entire shapes with the
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Three - Ordovician by WillemSvdMerwe, literature
Literature
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Three - Ordovician
THE AGES OF THE EARTH CHAPTER THREE ORDOVICIAN The Cambrian was followed by the Ordovician period, which started about 485 million years ago. It was a tumultuous time. Meteorites, remnants of the great chunks of space rock from which the Earth and other planets were formed, kept colliding at a rate 100 times more frequent than at present. The continents were shifting, through plate tectonics, and a great continent, Gondwana, formed in the south, with several other smaller masses around it and to the north. Around each continental area, a different suite of seabed-living creatures developed, leading to a lot of diversity. There was also diversity in time, as conditions changed. Whereas at the start of the Ordovician, global climates were very hot, towards the end of the Ordovician, the continent of Gondwana had drifted over the South Pole, which restricted the effect of warm ocean currents so that ice started to cover the South Polar area. Sea levels fell dramatically as the
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Two: Cambrian by WillemSvdMerwe, literature
Literature
The Ages of the Earth Chapter Two: Cambrian
CAMBRIAN The Phanerozoic started with an event called the Cambrian Explosion. This happened just about 540 million years ago. Suddenly at that point we find lots and lots of fossils of a vast diversity of multicellular living organisms! It's amazing how much better living things were apparently preserved from this point onward. Part of it is that some of the new animals had hard shells, exoskeletons or other bodyparts, that preserved better. This is due to using minerals, mainly calcium, and precipitating them into hard parts. It is possible that the Cambrian saw an increase in the amount of calcium and other minerals dissolved in the ocean waters, which could then be absorbed by animals and plants (which were just oceanic algae, including the first large seaweeds, at that point). Some of the Ediacarian fauna appear to have hard parts, but in the Cambrian, we have many, and the hard parts often encompassed most of their bodies, preserving virtually their entire shapes with the
I was born in 1972, Pretoria, South Africa. I started painting and drawing at the age of 5. I stopped doing that for a while to study some other fields, but recently I've been getting back into it. I love wildlife and nature but I also paint or draw people. I also paint and draw fantasy creatures or scenes, as well as extinct animals.
Hello all! I'm excited to announce that I'm working on a little book, "The Ages of the Earth". This will be a concise overview of the history of Life on Earth, from the Precambrian to the present day. To make it a bit easy on myself, for now the illustrations will be monochrome, except for colour illustrations I've already done. But this is just to give people an idea of the phases through which life evolved, the extinction crises and the rediversification that happened after each crisis. I'm planning to post the book chapter by chapter here, with the illustrations ... will just take a bit of time to decide how to organize it. Eventually I intend to make the whole thing available as an e-book for a low price. I hope you all are as excited as I am! It's been a lot of fun for me thus far.
I'd like to share this music video with y'all! Kaylyn Botha is the daughter of Adri, the owner of the local art gallery that sells and promotes my work. Kaylyn stiill has a few years of school ahead of her, but has enough talent to get a proper career in music going. This song is very light and poppy; it's her first Afrikaans song, she mostly sings in English.
Here it is, my book! This photo was taken 'in the wild' on a bird-watching trip and there were hippos nearby! This book has 42 of my articles published on the h2g2.com site, and of course lots of paintings and also many monochrome drawings. Lots of information, interesting little facts that few people would know, and it is easy to read. If you'd like to get this book, you can order it here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/willem-van-der-merwe/colours-of-wildlife/paperback/product-24029708.html and here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/willem-van-der-merwe/colours-of-wildlife/hardcover/product-23953329.html