Scientists Discovered Unknown Prehistoric World on Earth

Bright Side

You won't believe what scientists just stumbled upon—a hidden prehistoric world right here on Earth! Imagine uncovering ancient creatures and landscapes straight out of a blockbuster movie. These discoveries are rewriting history books and giving us a glimpse into a time long before humans roamed the planet. It's like stepping into a time machine and witnessing Earth's incredible evolution firsthand. Who knows what other secrets this mysterious world might hold? Stay tuned as researchers delve deeper into this fascinating journey through time!  #brightside   Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Listen to Bright Side on:  Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brightside/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official/ Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Snapchat - https://www.snapchat.com/p/c6a1e38a-bff1-4a40-9731-2c8234ccb19f/1866144599336960  Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me

Transcript

00:00 There are entire communities of unusual tiny organisms that live in lagoons in Patagonia,

00:06 and they are some of the first forms of life ever.

00:09 No one had known about them until two scientists, Brian and Maria, went to explore certain areas

00:15 in Patagonia.

00:17 Patagonia occupies nearly half of Argentina, and few people live there, only some farmers

00:22 and cheap ranchers that mostly stay near rivers and grow things such as apples, pears, and

00:27 alfalfa.

00:28 A long time ago, it was a wild and distant place where Indian tribes lived.

00:35 But this time, we're going to follow the tracks of life forms that appeared long before

00:39 humans and look closer at these interesting microorganisms Brian and Maria found.

00:45 Those two had to drive for 9 hours on some rough roads to reach their destination.

00:50 They stayed in a small village.

00:52 Only 35 people live there.

00:54 These people depend on just one spring because it almost never rains there.

00:59 On the last night in the village, Brian realized that satellite images he had taken had shown

01:05 a set of lagoons that were only 10 miles away.

01:08 The next day, the small team jumped into a car and went up the road as far as they could

01:14 until it became too difficult to drive.

01:16 They continued hiking the rest of the way.

01:19 It was hard because they had to carry water to deal with the intense sunlight.

01:24 In some spots, they ended up sinking up to their knees in a slush made of salt.

01:30 Up there, there were 12 lagoons with perfectly clear waters.

01:34 The place itself didn't offer much, except for very acidic and salty water and intense

01:39 direct sunlight.

01:41 But it was kinda like traveling back in time, because those conditions were like what Earth

01:46 looked like many, many years ago.

01:49 When Brian examined the lagoons, he was surprised to see many unusual microorganisms there.

01:55 We call them stromatolites, and they're so small we can't even see them without

01:59 a microscope.

02:01 But they get together and form large communities.

02:04 In the past, many unusual species lived this way.

02:07 For example, cyanobacteria.

02:10 They were important back in their time because they produced oxygen.

02:14 Earth in its initial stages didn't have much of this gas in its atmosphere.

02:20 The first stromatolites might've been formed by diverse types of bacteria that didn't

02:25 necessarily produce any oxygen but were just living their peaceful life there.

02:30 They formed layers, piling on top of one another, so that at least some of them could get a

02:34 bit of sunlight.

02:36 They used sand and sticky liquids to stay close together.

02:40 Brian was also incredibly surprised because those were the biggest living stromatolites

02:45 he had ever seen.

02:46 Living stromatolites usually grow to be over 3.3 feet high.

02:51 But the newly found ones were 15 feet wide and a few feet tall, which is giant compared

02:57 to those living in other places.

02:59 And fossilized ones were even larger.

03:02 A long time ago, they could grow bigger than today because there weren't many other species

03:07 that could eat or harm them.

03:11 Also, there are many other organisms today that can grow faster and more massive than

03:17 them and take up their space.

03:19 That's why stromatolites can only survive in rare places where hardly anything else

03:25 can live.

03:26 Like in these very salty lagoons located high above sea level in Puta de Atacama.

03:32 The stromatolites found there are the most famous ones because they might be some of

03:36 the best examples of the earliest life on our planet.

03:40 But they're not actually the first form of life on Earth.

03:43 The oldest of their fossils are 3.5 billion years old, while some other evidence we have

03:49 tells us that life on our planet appeared around 4.1 billion years ago.

03:55 Maybe some stromatolites lived back then as well.

03:58 But Earth has changed a lot since then, and the places where they might've lived haven't

04:03 survived.

04:04 Now, all this may not seem like a lot at first glance, because no one has found an exotic

04:11 and weird beast our world has never seen.

04:14 But these are notable examples of what searching for life somewhere else in the universe might

04:19 look like.

04:21 Scientists who are interested in studying Mars often come to this place since it might

04:25 be similar to what the Red Planet looked like an exceptionally long time ago.

04:30 If there were fossils hidden in the ancient rocks on Mars, they might look like these

04:35 stromatolites.

04:37 Another faraway land has revealed some of its secrets – it's Antarctica, with an

04:41 ancient lost world found under its ice.

04:45 Antarctica hasn't always been this frosty, isolated land of snow and ice sheets.

04:50 Once it used to be part of the Gawanda supercontinent, together with what is now South America, Africa,

04:56 Australia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian subcontinent.

05:01 But at some point, it split off and went to build a life on its own.

05:05 It formed as other landmasses started to move away, which created its coastline.

05:12 But Antarctica was different in many other ways back then too.

05:16 It used to be a land covered in magnificent forests and rivers full of life.

05:21 Scientists used radar and satellites to explore a mysterious world hidden under the ice there.

05:26 This ancient land, which is close to the Indian Ocean, is as big as the US state of Maryland

05:32 or Belgium.

05:33 It's more than 14 million years old.

05:36 Some studies say that this area formed over 34 million years ago, which was way before

05:41 Antarctica got into its deep freeze.

05:44 At first, temperatures there were higher, possibly like the weather in Patagonia or

05:49 the cold, temperate rainforests of Tasmania, New Zealand.

05:53 Or maybe even more tropical than that.

05:56 But as the climate became cooler, small glaciers started forming on hills close to the rivers.

06:02 Valleys sunk deeper because of all that ice covering them.

06:06 And then, temperatures dropped even lower, and a giant layer of ice covered the entire

06:11 continent, hiding those old glaciers.

06:17 Rivers shaped this lost world a long time ago, way before it ended up covered in ice

06:22 that's almost 2 miles thick in some spots.

06:26 Ice studies of this area showed that those landscapes had been full of highlands and

06:31 mountains.

06:32 The ice that formed over Antarctica made the whole area very cold, so the landscape couldn't

06:37 erode anymore.

06:39 This means everything has remained basically the same and untouched under the ice for millions

06:44 and millions of years.

06:46 What's interesting is that we know less about this land hidden under the ice than

06:50 about the surface of Mars.

06:53 One way to explore it would be to drill through these ice sheets to check for samples of sediments

06:58 below.

06:59 They could tell us more about the ancient flora and fauna frozen underneath.

07:04 It's not a new method.

07:05 A similar method was used to collect 2 million-year-old samples in Greenland.

07:10 Australia has a secret world too.

07:13 Ancient organisms were found hidden in rocks in the northern parts of the continent that

07:18 are about 1.6 billion years old.

07:21 These microscopic things are part of a family called eukaryotes.

07:25 The members of this family that exist today include plants, fungi, animals, and even those

07:31 tiny organisms with just one cell, such as amoeba.

07:36 All living things with nuclei in their cells, including us, can trace their family tree

07:41 back to one of the oldest members of this family.

07:44 That one is called the last eukaryotic common ancestor, and it lived more than 1.2 billion

07:50 years ago.

07:51 Those ancient organisms were more complex and bigger than bacteria.

07:55 Maybe they were the first predators on Earth, hunting bacteria.

08:00 That's it for today!

08:01 So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your

08:06 friends!

08:07 Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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