What Happens When It Rains For Millions of Years on Earth?

Jakarta – At the moment, rain which continues to fall invites worry. Especially for those who live in flood-prone areas. The longer it rains, the more likely it is that flooding will occur.

What happens if it rains for millions of years continuously?

If people today are worried about the rain that occurs for a while, then the earth has actually experienced very extreme weather. Quoted from Live Science, rain for millions of years had occurred about 233 million years ago.

To find out the impact, it can be traced to hundreds of millions of years ago when the earth was still in the form of Pangea. This form is a supercontinent or a combination of all the current continental plates. This era is referred to by researchers as the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE).

Millions of years of rain mark important events on earth. The climate, which was very dry in the late Triassic period, suddenly changed 180 degrees due to continuous rains. This event is caused by volcanic eruptions and other climate changes.

The journal Science Advances published in September 2020 explained, rain millions of years ago that happened continuously resulting in great extinctions. It is estimated that one-third of marine species to a large number of land plants and animals became extinct.

In detail, the following is an explanation of the impact of prolonged rains for these two million years:

1. Plants are getting bigger

Not only about extinction, the phenomenon of rain for two million years has certainly changed the order of ecosystems on earth. As a result, plants on earth also experience changes due to excessive proliferation.

This has an impact on the size of the tree which is getting bigger. At this time, according to PBS’s digital education platform, large conifer trees seem to dominate and coral reefs also experience an increase in size.

Plants with the ‘latest’ size were certainly a challenge for herbivores at that time. Like it or not, animals must adapt in order to meet their survival.

2. Dinosaurs are getting ‘successful’

Still related to the previous, the impact of this enlarged plant turned out to be beneficial to the dinosaurs. At this time, dinosaurs were said to be the dominant land animal group on earth.

Paleontologist Michael Simms said, during the CPE this group of dinosaurs underwent a massive evolution. Before the CPE period, dinosaurs were recorded as being relatively rare and smaller in size.

However, this phenomenon gave birth to the evolution of large-bodied dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Then, long-necked dinosaurs like, Brachiosaurus.

Not surprising, because the plants at that time were very large and tall. This is what prompted the dinosaur group to evolve to change its body size.

3. The emergence of a new group of species

The impact of this prolonged rain also not only had an evolutionary impact on dinosaurs. Jacopo Dal Corso, a professor of geology at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, said there were a number of animal and plant groups that dominated the ecosystem at that time.

“The key impact of the CPE period was rapid extinctions followed by large births (of new species),” he told EOS Science Magazine.

“A number of groups that have a central role in today’s ecosystems began to emerge or diversify for the first time 237 to 227 million years ago,” he added.

This group of species, said Dal Corso, is a group of coral reefs and plankton for the oceans. Then, other land fauna that also began to dominate the earth during the CPE period or rain namely, frogs, lizards, crocodiles, to turtles.

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