When did the grass evolve?
Due to its structural simplicity, you can think that grass has developed very long ago, along with the first plants. Interestingly, the fossil record shows that this is not the case. Grass only appears in a fossil record about 67 million years ago, in the form of phyoliths (small oxide silica stains in the grass that make digestive) found in the fossilized dinosaur manure. It was recently assumed that the grass had only developed about 55 million years ago and became abundant after the age of dinosaurs, which ended in a mass extinction 65 million years ago, but Fytholith found it.
Land plants have generally developed during Silurian, about 440 million years ago. These were simple mosses and lichens. Throughout the Mesozoic, dinosaurs consumed different plants, but did not touch the grass until it took place at the end of the period. If you are considering the entire length of the plants nine minutes. Today, however, many ecosystems are dominated by pastures that are estimated to cover 20% of the Earth's land, numerous animalsAnd he lives on the grass and members of the grass family are the most rewarding and economically most important plants in the world.
About 65 million years ago, the world was decimated by a massive asteroid blow, thanks to which all non -Yabian dinosaurs were indulged. The development of grass is often presented in this context, depicted as grass colonization of the world, which remained relatively infertile by mass extinction. However, this is a deception because the grass has spread up to more than 10 million years after extinction. Although 10 million years are not extremely lengthy from an evolutionary point of view, it is still too long to be accurate to present grass as a colonization due to extensive extinction of plants. The cover of the plants was a large part of a large part was restored only a few tens of thousands of years after extinction, not if before.
grass is considered to be one of the characteristic features of the cenozoic era, which includes time since the extinction of dinosaurs so far. ManyMammals show a close coevolution with grass, because special adaptations are required to digest his tissues rich in silica dioxide. Ruminants, such as cows, solve the problem using a multi -oral stomach that slowly spends grass and actually causes fermentation. Using this they can consume a large amount of grass to maintain. People, as a flexible omnipotent, lack the adaptations necessary to digest grass, have decided on more sources of food rich in calories such as fruit and meat.