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When It Rained For 2,000,000 Years

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The Carneian Pluvial Episode, a period of intense, long-lasting rainfall approximately 234 million years ago, significantly altered Earth's climate and ecosystems, leading to both extinctions and the diversification of new life forms, including the ancestors of dinosaurs.

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It's the weekend and you and your

friends have plans to go to the beach,

which means a few good things. Tasty

food, drinks, sand, and of course that

sweet, sweet sun. But when you guys

arrive, the rain starts coming down hard

and your plans are ruined, at least

temporarily. As not to worry, you can

just wait it out. But what if it keeps

raining and raining [music] and raining

and you guessed it, raining, and let's

say for a thousand years it is nothing

but dreary weather. Well, at that point,

I doubt you'd still be around. And if

you were, I'd tell you to suck it up. As

1,000 years of rain is actually a mercy

compared to what took place roughly 234

million years ago when one day it

started raining and then didn't stop for

nearly 2 million years. This was the

carnian pluial episode. As this name so

nicely puts it, this bizarre event in

history took place during the Carneian,

one of the six stages that make up the

Triacic and the first stage, the late

portion of it. In general, it's widely

regarded as a fairly normal and tame

stage as far as the triacic goes, which

isn't saying a whole lot given the whole

wackiness of this period. At that time,

most of the world's land was still tied

up into the massive superc continent of

Pangia, which spanned over 1/3 of the

planet's surface, while the super ocean

Panthalasa and the smaller ocean, the

Paleotthus, were essentially dominating

the rest of the globe. In the weather

and climate department, things were

triacic as usual, too, meaning a whole

lot of hot and aid weather that resulted

in many areas being straight up sand or

rocks. However, there were distinct wet

seasons that you definitely couldn't

miss. And I mean that literally, as the

extreme land to sea distribution led to

something called mega monsoons, which if

you can guess were monsoons that were

absolutely supercharged, being far more

intense than any monsoons around today.

So this in turn with the general just

crummy environment meant that big swaves

of the interior pangia which laid close

to the equator were straight up

uninhabitable for the vast majority of

life. And the problem with the interiors

were only further exacerbated by the

presence of the central pangian

mountains which laid near the center of

the massive land mass and essentially

split it into two resulting in a clear

north and south. And these mountains

were not only wide but also extremely

tall which led to them casting something

called rain shadows. massive ones,

resulting in some areas somehow being

even drier. While they also influence

the mega monsoons, making them just a

tad bit more unpredictable, which is

saying something. So, no doubt this was

one chaotic phase from mother nature.

Yet, life still managed to do its thing,

especially along the coast and southern

regions where the climate was a bit more

reasonable. And actually, life during

the Carnian had been able to ramp up

quite a bit with things starting to get

quite interesting. Part of this has to

do with the fact that the great dying

had taken place just before the

Jurassic, which had been bad enough that

life's recovery was still happening. So,

in other words, new things were always

popping up left and right, including a

group you've definitely heard of, the

dinosaurs. Yep, it was in this

relatively unheard time that the most

famous prehistoric group of animals

first emerged, or [music] at least the

first unequivocal true dinosaurs did.

Our knowledge about these OGs mainly

stems from the Santa Maria Formation, a

locality that sat within Pen and Brazil

and was composed of semi-arid lands

where Spar's forest and the odd river 2

rested. And if you time travelveled back

here, you would find within a novel type

of creature, the Starosaurus, a 2.25 m

or 7'5 in long Hiarasaur. In other

words, a type of dinosaur who was also,

by the way, among the largest dinos of

the time. But that's still not much as

it only needed to weigh the same as a

medium-sized dog in order to hold this

achievement. And this smaller size

opposed to its later kin limited its

diet to small and equally medium-sized

vertebrates like sinodons, rancosaurs,

and various synapsids. So, it was

certainly an oddball of a dino. Yet,

funny enough, it was also the normal one

in Santa Maria. As things get a bit

stranger when you take a look at the

only other known dinosaur, the

Burolestes, an even smaller dinosaur who

had sharp teeth, sharp claws, and get

this, two legs. So, clearly a theropod,

right? Uh, no. What you're looking at is

actually a sarapotamorpha, [music] which

meaning that one day it or its

descendants would give rise to giant

herbivorous sarapods. But for now, it

was a little meat eater. And we know

that it was not a theropod because it

possessed a downturned jaw tip and a

long delto pectoral crest on the

humorris. Both characteristics seen in

only sarapottomorphs. But visually

looking at this guy, I do have to admit

it's kind of a tough connection to make.

And in general, nearly every dinosaur

was like these guys. Two-legged and

small. But that being said, do not

underestimate them cuz they came in

great numbers. Kind of as alongside them

lived a large amount of non-dinosaur

dinosaur forms. In other words, the next

best thing to dinosaurs, being the

closest related things to them ever, but

which didn't quite hit the mark. And

some of the genera at the time included

Legosucus, Marasucus, and Salttopus, who

were even smaller than their more

derived kin. And if you saw them at a

passing glance, you might have confused

them for some strange lizard running

around on its two back legs. But

regardless, the presence of dinosaur

morpha was indeed very exciting, and by

association was great news for the

arosaurs. We're also cooking up a few

things besides the terrible lizards as

it was in this stage that we see some of

the most iconic animals of the late

triacic appear such as things like the

Risukians, phytosaurs, aotasaurs and

more. You name it and the carnian likely

had it. And when I say that, this does

extend to nonarchosaurs as well as other

new faces included the earliest

leitosaurs which included the ancestor

modern-day lizards, snakes, and

touittaraas. And you even had the first

Shiva swords in terasauramorpha appear

as well, which weren't actually

terasaurs as you might imagine them, but

rather their ancestors that had somewhat

terasaurike forms, which though in many

cases lacked wings, yet retained

structures that were like those of their

later descendants. And in the water,

things were cooking up too, with some

new faces including the earliest

plaadons, a unique, now extinct order

marine reptiles that superficially

looked like marine iguanas or like shell

turtles. And we also see bellites appear

in the carnine as well. in order of

squid-like sephopods that would

eventually become a major part of the

marine ecosystem all the way up to the

late Cretaceous in some cases achieving

some pretty remarkable sizes. But for

now, they remained kawaii size. So with

this all said, evidently the Carneian as

a whole was a spicy time for life. But

this was really all just a teaser of

what was to come. As in the background,

things were underway that would [music]

soon have intense ramifications. namely

along the western coast of North

America, you would have found the

massive Reangelia flood basults, a type

of large ignous province, commonly

abbreviated to LIP. Now, if you've been

following me long enough, you know this

only means trouble, as LIPs are well

known for being chaos harbingers. I

mean, just take a look at the Peran

extinction or Triacic extinction. Both

catastrophic events that were due to the

eruption of guess what? LIPs. And it was

around this time in the Carneian, aka

234 million years ago, that the

Reangalia flood basult finally erupted.

And they did so in brilliant fashion,

spewing untold amounts of lava, as well

as various gases, including one very

common face in present-day

world-changing events and events

overall, carbon dioxide. Now, let's just

say the Reangalia basalt, even for its

huge size, released an abnormal amount

of this stuff, which flooded the ocean

atmosphere system and leading to

worldwide global warming with

temperatures rising as much as 4 to8° C

or 7 to 14° F, making things quite

toasty to say the least. Meanwhile, the

rise in CO2 likely caused an extreme

acceleration of the hydraological cycle,

which basically supercharged continental

weathering. And it wasn't just the

amount of released carbon dioxide that

caused such a switch up, but also the

speed for these eruptions were short and

sweet. Ejecting this stuff at rates

typically not seen. And to make things a

little more dire, it seems that along

with carbon dioxide, these volcanoes

also contain atypical volumes of methane

clates, which without getting too

sciency is basically something that is

86 times more powerful than CO2 when it

comes to global warming potential,

exacerbating things just that much more.

And so when you combine all this global

warming and acceleration of the

hydraological cycle, one thing began to

happen. Rain and rain and rain. The

Coronian pluial event had officially

begun. Now we don't know and probably

will never know just how intense this

rain was. But we can say for certain

that it was coming down in unimaginable

amounts with it having essentially been

pouring dinosaurs and pseudoucians

rather than cats and dogs. Yeah, it was

that wild. In fact, the rain was so

extreme that we even have clear evidence

for its existence through certain rock

formations where the rain had eroded the

sediment enough to have exposed the

actual basement rock, which just for

reference are rocks laying right above

the mantle and sit below all other

sediments and rock, usually being buried

miles below the surface. So yeah, a lot

of rain erosion is needed to expose

them. Other signs that there was a

stupid amount of rain during this time

also included the widespread abundance

of amber in certain paleo soils that

only form when precipitation far exceeds

the amount of water being evaporated.

And as you know the amount of rain was

not the only ridiculous thing as like I

mentioned the duration was unbelievable

too saying that it lasted you know up to

2 million years. 2 million years of

perpetual rain. Well, I will admit that

perpetual maybe maybe a bit dramatic

because despite the common trope that it

rained non-stop for 2 million years

during this event, it probably didn't.

Instead, you would have found this time

to have had much higher rates of rain

than usual with events of hyper extreme

precipitation sprinkled in. No pun

intended. And the carium pluial wasn't

just all about rain, as in general, the

climate drastically switched from dry to

unusually humid. Basically, think the

wetest, soupiest rainforest possible,

transforming much of the planet into

tropical lush regions that would have

given the carboniferous a good run for

its money when it came to swampy-like

vibes with pete forests even having been

reestablished in this event. And a few

other things that became more common

during the CPE included flood planes and

marshes on massive scales, while giant

inland lakes that might have dwarfed the

Great Lakes of today were also present,

making this world 100% theophobia

certified. However, like most things,

where there is a push, there is a pull.

And while never ending rain was the rule

during this event, it turns out that

dryness remained during the car and

plovial episode. On top of periodic

episodes where aid conditions would

partially return, some studies have also

suggested that certain areas were

backstabbed by this event, becoming in

fact more erid than ever before. And

this included just about the driest

place in history, the interiors of

Pangia. As mentioned during the early

middle Triacic, these inter realms of

the continent were basically inhabitable

to life, being hot enough to essentially

cook a wide variety of meats, including,

by the way, living ones, and being so

dry that massive deserts took cold. And

thus, if they were really made worse by

the carvial episode, I doubt anything

could live within these extreme pockets.

Yet, I digress. In general, we're

talking about over a million years of

humid, relentless, rainy weather. And to

some, this might sound like a cozy time.

You know, like those cyberpunkish cities

where it's always raining. But in

reality, this event was less on the cozy

spectrum and more on the world ending or

changing spectrum. Because it turns out

that too much rain throws things into

array and the pluial event is considered

to be a forgotten extinction of sorts

with the changes to the environments,

worldwide flooding, and global warming

ending up in very high background rates

of extinction. And actually before this

rainy event was even hypothesized,

scientists were already aware that major

die-offs had occurred during the

Carnian. They just weren't sure why. But

now they know. Now perhaps surprisingly,

or maybe unsurprisingly, while you do

not feel the rain itself much

underwater, it was in fact marine life

that seems to have gotten battered the

most. With one hypothesis being that the

pluial event altered the oceans by

reducing their carbonate platforms and

thereby severely harming carbonate

forming animals resulting in large

amounts of conodants, ammonoids and

brizzoa dying out while algae and

kryoids took a massive hit as well. And

on top of that, can you guess what

million years of rain could do to an

ocean which you know is a salty body of

water? Yeah, dilute it. And there's

pretty good evidence that this happened

with the ocean salinity decreasing by

quite a bit which to me or you wouldn't

feel like much. But for certain marine

animals would have been literal torture

totally disrupting their homeostasis and

adding again to the higher background

extinction rate. Now on the flip side on

land the situation was a bit less dire

but still definitely not perfect as

there were more than a few animals that

had a tough time dealing with the

flooding rain and general transformation

of environments. And one of the main

groups to get pelted was one I've

already briefly named the rancosaurs.

This was a group of herbivorous

crocapota, meaning they were closer to

arcosaurs than lepitosaurs. And at first

appeared during the early days of the

Jurassic, finding great success quickly

and becoming quite abundant in certain

parts of Pangia, sometimes in fact

accounting for 40 to 60% of all

specimens from a formation. And

reflecting this, at the start of the

carnian, they could not have been doing

any better. Originally, they had been on

the small side and had lizard-like

builds, but now they'd achieved lengths

up to 2 meters and attained more robust

builds, while their faces lengthened and

became more triangular. And everything

seemed like it was only going to get

better for them. But, uh, the carnian

pluial event seemingly had other ideas.

And the rangosaurs were absolutely

battered during these years, with the

main idea being that they couldn't keep

up with a change in forests with their

preferred vegetation becoming rare and

rare. And essentially every family died

off except for one, the Hyperiro

Dapodonte. And still not even these guys

lasted much longer, disappearing the

very next stage. So uh these guys had a

pretty valid reason to hate the rain,

which by the way, so did the Dinanodons.

This group needs no introduction, having

given us plenty of iconic animals like

the placeras or listsaurus. But for

refresher sake, this was a very diverse

group of non-mleian thorrapsids that

were herbivores and typically possessed

tusks, thus their name, which means two

dog tooththed. Now, unlike many of the

others I've named so far, these guys had

actually been around since the perian.

And like the rancosaurus had been doing

just fine, but for similar reasons,

found themselves struggling during the

Pluial event, and many of the living

groups of the time wound up going

extinct. Yet, they would end up fairing

a tad bit better than the rankosaurs,

persisting a tad bit longer given their

greater diversity. But nevertheless,

they too still disappeared, going

extinct around 211 million years ago.

But with that said, what's very odd

about the Carne Pluvial event is that

while background extinction rates were

abnormally high at this time, I dare say

that more animals and organisms have it

to thank. As many walks of life actually

received quote unquote power-ups because

of it, including of course the biggest

rain lovers out there, plants and trees.

As the lands took a step back from the

arid paradigm, flora unsurprisingly

began a strong comeback with forests and

swamps sprouting all over the world. And

it was during this time that ferns,

conifers, and the Benicetalians heavily

diversified leading to them becoming the

main staves of messoic flora. And the

level up seen in forests as well as the

rise of inland lakes and lush

environments ultimately had a beneficial

impact on various creatures including by

the way the future mighty rulers of

Earth, the dinosaurs. Yep. As it so

turns out, it might have been this rainy

event that was an essential step in

their development with their diversity,

diversification rate, and size greatly

increasing after the CPE. And actually,

the overall abundance of dinosaurs also

ticked upwards during the Carneuvial

event. Informations go from yielding a

couple dinosaur genera to sometimes

nearly 10. And perhaps the best example

for this is the Isco Gulto formation out

of Argentina, which had at least eight

different kinds of dinosaurs living

within it, including multiple

sarapottomorphs and herrerasaurs.

Amongst them, you would have even found

the Herrerasaurus itself, which was one

of the largest predatory dinosaurs to

have lived throughout the entire triacic

with specimens growing up to 6 m or 20

ft long and possessing large serrated

teeth, allowing them to hunt a large

range of vertebbrates they lived

alongside while also becoming one of the

more common carnivores in this specific

ecosystem with over 50 different

specimens having been recovered. Other

specific genera included the likes of

Eoraptor, Eodromeus, Antias, Panagia,

and San Juansaurus, who was itself, by

the way, not much smaller than the

Herrerasaurus. Additionally, it's only

after this event that we see the rise of

the first giant dinosaurs, as it's

during the Norian some 228 million years

ago, that we get the evolution of

Lassamosaurus, one of the largest

triacic dinosaurs of all time. being a

sarapod that measured 12 m or 39 ft long

and weighed possibly up to 10 metric

tons near the record weight of an

African elephant. So not much compared

to the Jurassic and Cretaceous sarapods,

but impressive nonetheless. However,

having said this, you must remember that

the Triacic was not the dinosaur's

heyday. There were other more prominent

groups about who also got their own

power-ups after the CPE and this largely

involved the Aotosaurus who became one

of the most dominant animals on land and

were arosaurs more related to crocodiles

than birds and dinosaurs. It's easy to

call this group a odd bunch as on the

surface they looked like armored medium

to large-sized croc-like creatures. Yet

they were terrestrial and usually

herbivorous or at the most omnivorous

not predatorial. And it seems they

vastly benefited from the new forest

which emerged. Being able to better

specialize in conifers and ferns

compared to previous orders like the

rankosaurs. As another huge winner in

all this happened to be a somewhat close

relative of the aotasaur, albeit a tad

more bloodthirsty, and that was the

semi-aquatic phytosaurs. It's not hard

to imagine why a group of semi-aquatic

carnivores would do well after, well,

[music] a lot of rain. With the rise of

swamps and giant mega lakes being the

phytosaur's equivalent of taking a huge

whiff of smelling salts and very rapidly

they diversified, increasing their range

and ballooning in size, getting

essentially large enough that they could

take on just about anything. Meaning

that even sarapods of certain sizes had

to be on edge whenever taking a sip of

fresh water. And honestly giving me just

one more reason why to stay away from

giant pitless lakes. And while not to

the same degree, it seems that turtles

and crocodilomorphs made some headway as

well, further diversifying. So, who

knows? Maybe we have a 234

million-year-old rainstorm to thank for

crocs and turtles today. Of course,

though, I can't talk about a triacic

event without actually mentioning how

the true terrestrial rulers as far as

predators go, fared, which would be, by

the way, the Rowisukians, a diverse

group of usually quadripedal, terrifying

arcosaurs that had wicked jaws, armor,

and uh bad tempers. They had already

established themselves the dominant

predators at this point and were found

virtually worldwide while also nearly

always being an apex predator within

their respective ecosystems. However,

despite their power level, they like all

animals were impacted by the CPE. But

what kind of changes the pluial event

incurred on them is a bit more ambiguous

as there is debate on the extent of its

influence with some stating that even if

it hadn't occurred, not much would

change in the Rowisukian's timeline,

which obviously is a timeline that ends

with extinction. Although with this

said, there are a few interesting things

which have been observed in this group

and the timing of the event. For

starters, while the Rowisukians have

been fairly diverse throughout much of

the late triacic, a good chunk of genera

only pop up during the Carneian and more

specifically around or directly after

the eternal rainstorm. On top of that,

while they also were always quite sizy,

there does seem to be an increase in

body stature only following the rain.

This could have been sheer coincidence

of course yet interesting regardless and

was sour news for all non-raisukian life

as it's around this time that we start

to see genera like the sarosucus a

massive unit of a member that was 23 ft

or 7 m long and weighed about half a ton

while the even bigger the solosucus also

only appears following the carnian

albeit much later on and even though it

may be that these changes were unlin to

the carnian pluial episode I think it's

fair to say that 2 million years of rain

still had a rather large impact on on

the planet and changed its course

forever. Which thus only leaves one more

question, which is what happened

afterwards? What's the conclusion? Well,

eventually, like all things, the volcano

stopped erupting and the rain slowly

subsided, leading to a resume in the

air, dry and hot conditions that we know

of so well. However, while things in

some ways returned to normal, the

impacts of the carneium pluial event

were [music] lasting as changes

undergone by animals because of it would

ultimately lead to certain results seen

down the [music] road, either directly

or indirectly. So, the next time it

rains, I want you to remember this video

and thank it for giving us crocodiles

and turtles maybe. Thanks for watching

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YouTube Transcript:When It Rained For 2,000,000 Years