To see the page ALBANIAN FAUNA as the geological event, click here.
'STRIPED ANIMALS'
Albazoa, (plural Albazoans; singular Albazoan) is a class of animal native to the planet Paart - being composed entirely of marine soft-bodied creatures somewhat similar to Earth's Ediacaran fauna, in both appearance and life-style.
The Albazoans are believed to first appear between 3700~3730 PMA, in the Neoproterozoic era, more specifically, between the late Paleopyrgian period and the Neopyrgian period, into half the Mesofrigian epoch - however it would take another 30~40 million years for further diversification to really happen, this took place in a short period of 17 million years, nicknamed 'Rigean Explosion', which gave birth to the 7 main clades of Albazoa.
Although the Rigean Explosion is a great mark in the history of this class, it happened midway in it's slow pacing journey to conquer the waters of Paart, to further understand how this all happened we must go back by almost 200 million years, to the Ectasian period.
RISE OF MULTICELLULAR LIFE
It's the mid Ectasian period, it's been nearly 100 million years since multicellular life first appeared, different blobs of cells cooperated to produce energy, breathe, hunt and secure it's colony, although those were somewhat different, if you analyzed them up close, classifying their kinds would be cloudy and nitpicking on single subtle characteristics, for simplicity sake, it would be more considerate to call them, Xezoa (alien animals).
The thing with Xezoa, is that for the last 100 million years, stromatolites - colonies of oxygen-producing bacteria, have been pumping the atmosphere up with oxygen, so far, the largest amounts ever seen, making up for ~14% of the atmosphere - in the ocean, concentrations of oxygen were about 3,6x more that of Earth's, what would allow increases in growth of 1,5x for aerobic life.
The extra oxygen also created thicker ozone layer - this ozone layer allowed colonies of animal cells to establish themselves on shallow waters, where otherwise they would be burned to death by deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, these new areas opened up a new opportunity, for early microscopic-herbivores, early predators of these herbivores, and macro-colonies living off the organic matter left by the life-cycle of the other animals, this series of events marked the split between what would later become Metazoans and Albazoans.
To further improve their absorption of resources, nature selected the ones with a larger surface area, though, that could also survive long enough for the release of gametes - this favored a body composed of a strong vertical stem, and several intertwined surfaces that grew in seemingly fractal clusters, ie, a frond-like structure.
At the time, Paart would be divided into one big frozen continent on the north and one southern hemisphere of ocean, the temperature gradient and uninterrupted currents would account for the most violent weather patterns ever seen in a terrestrial world, the coasts of the northern hemisphere would be regularly corroded by inches a day, via giant tsunamis and hypercanes circling the planet uninterrupted for months until the season changes.
With oceans rich in carbon compounds, as well other minerals washed out by the waves and storms from the continent to the sea by the hyper-canes and tsunamis that occurred regularly, seafloor sedimentation would set with regular thin layers of bacterial processed sediment and pure sediment brought from the erosion of land. This alternated sediment pattern gave the period it's name, and the most successful class of animal at the time too.
The simple frond-like structure wouldn't hold well, as the storms would settle a new layer of sediment on the sea-floor each day, much of the Albazoan fauna would be quickly buried alive if not by an evolutionary innovation - for all of history, is rather surprising you would find steroid hormones so early on in the history of life - or at least, in such proportions.
The changes to paartene geography happened at a pace the animals could keep up, so they developed over time growth hormones to be deployed during on it's early life stages, this way, the animal could quickly in a matter of weeks grow a long vertical stem, strengthened with calcium sulfate or calcium carbonate, depending on which is more easy to obtain at the region, and growing it's feeding frond at the tip, like that, it wouldn't only secure a good buffer time for itself, but also protect itself against another evolutionary novelty of the epoch - metamorphosis.
While most of metazoan life forms were limited to rhizopods, diatoms, cilliates and other microscopic eukaryotes, that didn't care at all if the seafloor was rising or not, greater lifeforms like the albazoans had to find a way out of the problems posed by their own size, one solution put in practice by many clades, was to allow it's young to swim around by themselves, giving origin to pseudo-medusas and benthic larvae, both which could swim or crawl it's way out of the sediment as it settled down, before they could be large enough to fix on the seafloor and reproduce.
The external shell of the stem, then proved itself to be a useful defense against the hungry and pesky larvae of other albazoans and the pressure put by the sediment. Over millions of years, neoteny would make larvae their own kind, with further diversification and establishing an ecosystem of their own.
The Albazoan reign only ended because they very environment that helped them to develop, was fading away, once the continents begun to split once again, breaking the oceanic currents, warming the planet and reducing the oxygen content of the waters, this new weather along with the advances made by the more sophisticated Metazoans did wiped out 5 out of the 7 major clades of Albazoa, the other 2 clades did survived into the 'Cambrian Explosion' before finally ending the 200 million year long run of this rather amazing class of animals.
It's worth mentioning that it is not only likely, but would be rather absurd if the previous sheer availability of sessile albazoan biomass didn't help build up the Metazoan success, what would also explain why the last surviving clades of albazoans were totally motile.
The extra oxygen also created thicker ozone layer - this ozone layer allowed colonies of animal cells to establish themselves on shallow waters, where otherwise they would be burned to death by deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, these new areas opened up a new opportunity, for early microscopic-herbivores, early predators of these herbivores, and macro-colonies living off the organic matter left by the life-cycle of the other animals, this series of events marked the split between what would later become Metazoans and Albazoans.
THE SPLIT
Fast forward 80 million years, and the difference between Metazoa and Albazoa became more evident, as the latter reached colossal proportions compared to it's surroundings, feeding osmotrophically (through respiration), the Albazoans grew in large and dense colonies with a seemingly unlimited supply of both oxygen and organic particles gathered from the atmosphere by algae, and broken down by Metazoans and bacteria to be released in the water.To further improve their absorption of resources, nature selected the ones with a larger surface area, though, that could also survive long enough for the release of gametes - this favored a body composed of a strong vertical stem, and several intertwined surfaces that grew in seemingly fractal clusters, ie, a frond-like structure.
PAART'S CLIMATE AND THE ALBAZOA
Paart's extreme weather seen from space, early Cambrian period
At the time, Paart would be divided into one big frozen continent on the north and one southern hemisphere of ocean, the temperature gradient and uninterrupted currents would account for the most violent weather patterns ever seen in a terrestrial world, the coasts of the northern hemisphere would be regularly corroded by inches a day, via giant tsunamis and hypercanes circling the planet uninterrupted for months until the season changes.
With oceans rich in carbon compounds, as well other minerals washed out by the waves and storms from the continent to the sea by the hyper-canes and tsunamis that occurred regularly, seafloor sedimentation would set with regular thin layers of bacterial processed sediment and pure sediment brought from the erosion of land. This alternated sediment pattern gave the period it's name, and the most successful class of animal at the time too.
The simple frond-like structure wouldn't hold well, as the storms would settle a new layer of sediment on the sea-floor each day, much of the Albazoan fauna would be quickly buried alive if not by an evolutionary innovation - for all of history, is rather surprising you would find steroid hormones so early on in the history of life - or at least, in such proportions.
The changes to paartene geography happened at a pace the animals could keep up, so they developed over time growth hormones to be deployed during on it's early life stages, this way, the animal could quickly in a matter of weeks grow a long vertical stem, strengthened with calcium sulfate or calcium carbonate, depending on which is more easy to obtain at the region, and growing it's feeding frond at the tip, like that, it wouldn't only secure a good buffer time for itself, but also protect itself against another evolutionary novelty of the epoch - metamorphosis.
While most of metazoan life forms were limited to rhizopods, diatoms, cilliates and other microscopic eukaryotes, that didn't care at all if the seafloor was rising or not, greater lifeforms like the albazoans had to find a way out of the problems posed by their own size, one solution put in practice by many clades, was to allow it's young to swim around by themselves, giving origin to pseudo-medusas and benthic larvae, both which could swim or crawl it's way out of the sediment as it settled down, before they could be large enough to fix on the seafloor and reproduce.
The external shell of the stem, then proved itself to be a useful defense against the hungry and pesky larvae of other albazoans and the pressure put by the sediment. Over millions of years, neoteny would make larvae their own kind, with further diversification and establishing an ecosystem of their own.
THE MARATHON ENDS
And over 155 million years they thrived with incredible technique and handling of their environment, the constantly advancing seafloor would make detailed record of thousands upon thousands of specimens in all stages of their life-cycles. It's only speculated the possibility that the Albazoan biomass alone could have once been up to 70~80% of all animal biomass in the planet, nearly 15% of all biomass of the planet, the other 85% are nearly equally divided between bacteria/archea and algae.The Albazoan reign only ended because they very environment that helped them to develop, was fading away, once the continents begun to split once again, breaking the oceanic currents, warming the planet and reducing the oxygen content of the waters, this new weather along with the advances made by the more sophisticated Metazoans did wiped out 5 out of the 7 major clades of Albazoa, the other 2 clades did survived into the 'Cambrian Explosion' before finally ending the 200 million year long run of this rather amazing class of animals.
It's worth mentioning that it is not only likely, but would be rather absurd if the previous sheer availability of sessile albazoan biomass didn't help build up the Metazoan success, what would also explain why the last surviving clades of albazoans were totally motile.
THE ANIMALS
Now, let's take a look at what more specifically were the Albazoans about - we can classify them in two major clades:- Xenorangea, single upright frond-like structure.
- Chalea, expanding multi-level carpet-like structure.
Which can be expanded like so:
XENORANGEA (upright frond-like feeding surface)
X. Tropicallia (stem clade)
Ptosidaria (short stem)
Elpidodaria (tall stem)
- P. Equator
- P. Tropica
- E. Kopilasia
Illaborea (pseudo-medusae)
- E. Elpida
Erpaea (benthic larvae)
CHALEA
Louloudios (radial feeding surfaces)
- L. Loulodia
Cherios (fewer large feeding surfaces)
- C. Cheri
Chalios (many small feeding surfaces)
- C. Chalea
They can also be organized latitude-wise, Equatorial to Poleward, as they adapted to specifically inhabit waters with certain temperature and sedimentation rate, as such:
Ptosidaria, Louloudios, Cherios, Elpidodaria, Illaborea, Erpaea, and Chalios.
We also observe temperature is somewhat related to the amount of feeding surfaces on the animals, with lower temperatures favoring more area, maybe related to the relative scarcity of food particles on colder regions.
GALLERY
Comparison between Xenorangeans of the same age, although, the specimen Tropicallia tropica is from the early Albanian, while Elpida dikitya is from the mid Albanian.
Art by M.O. Valent
Art by M.O. Valent
***
Return to XEZOA on Tree of Life
That's all for now, you can help expand this page by joining Project Paart on our Discord or DeviantArt group.
No comments:
Post a Comment