Sciences and Arts
The Ancient and Future Art of Terraforming
Between roughly two billion and one billion years ago the first known terraforming event took place on this planet: the Oxygen Catastrophe. During this event, cyanobacteria used photosynthesis to fix nitrogen and build robust adaptive structures in the reducing atmosphere of the early Earth, and in the process they excreted oxygen in global quantities. Once all the iron on the Earth’s surface had rusted, absorbing as much oxygen as it could, the planet’s atmosphere changed radically, into something close to what it is today.
Stromatolites, corals and shellfish changed the geology of the planet, creating colossal limestone deposits which, when subducted under the mantle, caused new forms of volcanic and rifting activity. Hydrocarbons were laid down by plants. The colonization of the land by arthropods, insects, and vertebrates was a similarly dramatic event, as was the evolution of the angiosperms, the flowering plants. Termites and ungulates produced greenhouse gases; worms and grasses changed the soils; beavers altered watersheds profoundly; climax forests changed the local climates.
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