Welcome to my Metazoic site! This site discusses the existence of the creatures to come along after humans will be extinct. I first became interested in a world after man when I acquired my first copy of Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future in 1992. However, I unwittingly created creatures that did not exist from the time I was about 8 years old. But it was after I obtained a copy of that book (now a collector's item) that I decided to take these same creatures I created as a child and make them more realistic in an evolutionary sense. Though it may be hard for a lot of us to grasp, humans will soon become extinct. One of the biggest factors of how this will happen is the current overpopulation rate. Which is why I don't contribute to the population. I created this world with little more than mammals fulfilling all ecological niches with the help of some friends. I even gave the era of the age after man a name, I called it the Metazoic, derived from the words for "After-era" (Meta, meaning after, and zoic meaning era). We are now in the Cenozoic era. To view all the animals I have created since I began this project, you can go to the "Meet the Mammals" section of this site. To discuss your own ideas about what you think will happen in the future world, and share your ideas with others, please feel free to leave a comment.
One more thing, some of you may find this site quite offensive, and you have a right to your own opinion. But please respect my right to have an opinion too. I'm not saying there is no GOD, I believe it was HIM who got the ball rolling. But I believe after that, evolution took over. There is so much more evidence of evolution than there is of creation. Even that going on right under our noses. Other than that, enjoy yourself and visit our many links.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Minerals Evolved?

It's true, minerals evolved along with all life forms. They even went through cycles where they became extinct. I found this very interesting article today on my homepage.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/13/minerals-evolution.html

Life and Minerals Evolve Together
Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Nov. 13, 2008 -- Etched in the shockwaves of exploding stars, in the gas and dust of fledgling stellar nebulae -- and in Earth's ample oceans, winds and fiery volcanoes -- the multi-billion-year history of minerals appears ageless to us mere mortals.

But an ambitious new study describes how these seemingly static forms have evolved through the ages, just like biological life. From the 12 "primordial" minerals forged inside supernovae to the 4,300 or so mineral species known today, minerals have diversified, grown in complexity, and even been driven into extinction.

"The most basic definition of evolution is change over time," said Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., who led a team of researchers in the work, published today in the journal American Minerologist. "And that's dramatically displayed in the stories of minerals."
Before life evolved on Earth, the slow, inexorable grind of plate tectonics created a total of 1,500 mineral species. Now, Hazen said, most minerals require living creatures to spring into existence.

"That's about as far as we think you can get without life," he said. That means about two-thirds of all known minerals depend on Earth's living creatures to survive.

In life's beginnings, it may have been the other way around.

"Many people believe that life first appeared from some sort of interaction of organic molecules on a mineral surface," said Peter Heaney of Pennsylvania State University.

Soon afterward, the earliest life forms began changing the same chemistry that formed them. About 2.3 billion years ago, photosynthetic organisms started consuming carbon dioxide and sunlight and exhaling oxygen. For the first time, our planet had free oxygen floating around in the atmosphere.

"Before that, if you left a piece of iron or steel on Earth's surface, it wouldn't rust," Hazen said. "But all of a sudden, life produced oxygen, and you start getting get rust -- and oxides of copper, manganese, and cobalt. There are literally thousands of minerals analogous to rust. You wouldn't have these without oxygen."

If all life were suddenly wiped out, the 20-percent-oxygen atmosphere we currently enjoy would vanish in a matter of years. Along with the O2, all those minerals would go extinct.
Minerals containing radioactive elements with short half-lives, such as plutonium, melted into extinction long ago (all plutonium on Earth today is man-made). And Heaney suspects there's a new field of mineral archaeology just waiting to be born.

"No one has ever mapped out mineral extinction in Earth's history," Heaney said. "In a way, [Hazen's] work forces us to think in those terms and look for the mineral equivalent of a fossil record."

I usually have my homepage set to Metazoica.com, but this time since I f-disked my computer, it's been set to the Toshiba website. I've just been too lazy to switch it back, but I like that, because it's got a list of scientific news articles from discovery.com, many about evolution. So when I see one that sounds particularly interesting, I'll share it here.
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