Growth Rhythms, Evolution of the Earth’s Interior, and Origin of the Metazoa

Abstract

Growth patterns preserved in the accretionary skeletons of fossils provide the only known method of directly measuring the rate of the Earth’s rotation in the distant past. From seasonal and tidal growth patterns of fossils, one can determine the number of days per year and per month, respectively, in the distant past. Together, these values can be used to distinguish the effects of moment of inertia changes on the length of day from those of tidal friction. When the Metazoan accretionary skeleton originated in the Late Precambrian-Cambrian, the length of day determined from fossils was approximately 19 hr. This value requires that density differentiation of the Earth was essentially complete well before the end of the Precambrian. The growing length of day, as well as prior differentiation of oxygenated outer layers (atmosphere, hydrosphere, and crust) from the Earth’s dense layers within, were prerequisites for the origin of the Metazoa. Circadian (= approximately 24 hr) rhythms in living Metazoa do not readily adapt to environmental cycles less than about 19 hr. Prokaryotes generally lack circadian rhythms because their generation times are less than a day; prokaryotes were well-adapted to Precambrian days less than 19hr duration, as well as to oxygen-poor environments. As the length of day increased to 19 hr or more during the Late Precambrian, eukaryotes with life spans substantially longer than a day (and consequently with an ability to postpone energy usage beyond a day) evolved. During the Phanerozoic, moment of inertia changes were relatively small, so that lunar tidal friction became the most important cause of changing length of day. However, some researchers believe that even the former may have left an imprint on fossil growth patterns. This conclusion is difficult to confirm, given the uncertainties of growth pattern analyses. But facies-by-facies comparisons of growth patterns can help reduce this uncertainty; presumed tidal growth patterns should change systematically with depth of habitat, for example. Preliminary analyses for Late Ordovician brachiopods from Indiana suggest that this approach will be productive, and may help evaluate the suggestion that the Late Ordovician-Silurian was a time of unusual evolution of the Earth’s moment of inertia during the Phanerozoic.