| Comments |
Abstract: "The Geozoic encompasses the 3.6 Ga interval in Earth history when life has existed. Over this time, life has diversified from exclusively tiny, single-celled organisms to include large, complex multicellular forms. Just how and why this diversification occurred has been a major area of interest for paleontologists and evolutionary biologists for centuries. Here, [investigators] compile data on organism size throughout the Geozoic fossil record for the three domains of life. [They] describe canonical trends in the evolution of body size, synthesize current understanding of the patterns and causal mechanisms at various hierarchical scales, and discuss the biological and geological consequences of variation in organismal size." P.524 top paragraph: "The Geozoic, the ∼3.6 Ga period of Earth history when the planet has supported life, began with the origin of living things and has subsequently been characterized by an enormous diversification of body form, complexity, and function." |