00:00200 million years ago, it started to rain. And it did not stop for 2 million years.
00:06This is the craziest event in the history of our planet. It is called the Carnian Pluvial episode.
00:12Around 234 million years ago, the sky opened up, and the earth was drenched, not for a day,
00:17not for a year, but for nearly 2 million years straight. And here is the strange part.
00:22Before this rain, dinosaurs were nothing. They were small. They were rare. Everywhere they went,
00:28bigger animals pushed them around. Then, after the rain finally ended, dinosaurs took over the
00:34planet. So how does a storm of rain hand the world to a creature nobody took seriously?
00:38To understand this, we have to look at what the earth looked like back then.
00:42It was nothing like today. There were no 7 continents. All the land was joined into one
00:48giant supercontinent called Pangaea. In the middle of Pangaea, near the equator, lay an enormous desert,
00:53bone dry and scorching. Temperatures were several degrees hotter than now. If you stood in the
00:58interior, it would feel like standing inside a giant oven. And the ruler of that oven was not a
01:03dinosaur. It was a family of reptiles with a crocodile-like look, called the Pseudosukians.
01:08They were huge, they were numerous, and they sat at the very top of the food chain.
01:13Dinosaurs? They were so low in the pecking order they were barely on the map.
01:17So if life was going fine, why did it suddenly start raining? The answer was underground.
01:23About 232 million years ago, beneath what is now western Canada, magma found a crack.
01:28A colossal volcanic eruption began. This was no two-day smoke. This was a flood basalt eruption
01:34that lasted millions of years. Geologists call it the Rangelia large igneous province.
01:39The lava it poured out would cover several countries stacked together.
01:43But the lava itself was not the real problem. The real problem was what it threw into the sky,
01:47carbon dioxide. Imagine this. The earth was already hot, already warmed by a strong greenhouse effect.
01:55Then something kept pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, non-stop, for millions of years.
02:00The greenhouse effect intensified. Global temperatures climbed. The hotter it got,
02:06the more the oceans evaporated. The more they evaporated, the thicker the clouds became.
02:11And then the rain came. So what does 2 million years actually mean?
02:15From the moment humans learned to chip stone to the day we launched rockets into space is only 2-3
02:20million years. The entire story of humanity fits inside the time the earth spent raining.
02:25And what happened to the planet during all that rain? The deserts vanished. The vast dry interior of
02:30Pangaea turned into wetlands, swamps, and rainforests. The drought-tolerant plants that had covered the
02:36ground died off across huge areas. In their place came ferns and seed ferns, plants that loved damp conditions.
02:42The entire foundation of the ecosystem was swapped out. And when the foundation changes,
02:47the whole building collapses. At the time, there was a group of animals called the dicinodonts,
02:52the most common plant-eaters of their age. Their teeth, and their entire digestive system,
02:57were built for the tough, hard plants of a dry world. Then the rain came, and the menu changed.
03:02They could not eat the new plants. They began to die off on a massive scale.
03:06And when the plant-eaters collapse, the predators above them suffer too. The Pseudosuchians were top
03:12predators, but with prey disappearing, even they could not hold on. On top of that, that damp, humid
03:18world was simply uncomfortable for the land-dwelling rulers. Take crocodiles today. They love water.
03:24But back then, those land-dominating reptiles were adapted to a hot, dry world. It is like this.
03:30Nature changed the exam paper. The old champions were masters at the old test.
03:35Suddenly the new paper was handed out, and they all froze. But the dinosaurs?
03:40They just happened to be the ones who could pass the new exam. Even though dinosaurs had been
03:45overlooked, they had a few real advantages. They likely already had bird-like air sacks in their
03:49bodies. One breath could pull in far more oxygen than a mammal or reptile of the same size.
03:55In a world that was hot, humid, and shifting in oxygen levels, that was a superpower. And dinosaurs
04:01walked efficiently. Most reptiles sprawl with their legs out to the side, like a push-up.
04:06Dinosaurs stood on two legs straight under their bodies. Walking the same distance cost them far
04:11less energy. When times get tight, the one that saves energy survives longer. That is a basic rule of the
04:17game. Even more important, dinosaurs came in wildly different sizes. There were fast little runners.
04:24There were heavyweights. Whenever an ecological niche opened up, they could fill it. Other animals
04:29specialized. Dinosaurs were all-rounders. Wherever there was a vacancy, they moved in. So this two
04:36million-year rain became a great reshuffling. One reigning champion after another fell. The
04:41Dicinodonts collapsed. Many Pseudosuchians could not hold on. And the dinosaurs quietly climbed,
04:47one niche at a time. By the time the rain finally stopped, the ecological map of the Earth had been
04:52completely redrawn. The old stars had all left the stage. Standing in the center of it now were
04:58the dinosaurs, the ones nobody had once bothered to look at. From that moment, the dinosaurs entered
05:03their era. That era lasted nearly 165 million years. Our entire recorded civilization is at most 6,000 years
05:11old. The dinosaurs ruled this planet tens of thousands of times longer than all of human civilization.
05:16And the starting point of all of it was a rainstorm. Is that not astonishing? Dinosaurs did not win by
05:22beating anyone. They did not evolve a superweapon. They did not outsmart their rivals. They simply got
05:29lucky. They were standing there when a 200 million-year downpour ended, and every throne was empty. So they
05:35sat down. And the reptiles that once ruled the world. They did not vanish entirely. But they shrank,
05:41and shrank, until only one branch of their descendants made it to today. It is the crocodile
05:46you now watch through the glass at the zoo. So the history of this planet keeps repeating the same
05:50lesson. What decides who gets to be the main character is never who is stronger, or smarter,
05:55or works harder. It is a shift you never saw coming. A volcanic eruption. A rain that lasts 2 million
06:02years. Enough to pull a champion off the throne, and turn an extra into the new king. This planet does
06:08not care about seniority or origins. It only recognizes one thing. Whoever can survive the
06:13next change becomes the master of the next age.
