Columbia was a supercontinent thought to have existed about 2,500 to 1,500 million years ago in the Paleoproterozoic Era. It is also known as Nuna and Hudsonland. It consisted of proto-cratons known as the Amazonian Shield, Australia, Baltica, Laurentia, and the Ukrainian Shield. It may have possibly included Kalaharia, North China and Siberia as well.
Following its creation by combining most or all of the known bits and pieces of land, Columbia continued to grow by various areas of volcanic activity that created magma flows.
Columbia began to fragment about 1.5 to 1.35 billion years ago.
This is pretty much the sum total of what I learned from this article. I find it irritating when an article that is supposedly written for the average person presumes that the average person has taken a course or three in the specific subject covered by the article, and so it is filled with language and terms that actually mean very little to the average person. More and better pictures might have helped.
There was one graph that seemed to say that when Columbia began collecting its various pieces, single-cell life was strong, as was photosynthesis. Then a type of life known as eukaryotes began. This is a very broad type of life, where the cell nucleus containing the cell’s DNA is enclosed within a nuclear envelope. This is so broad a definition that these days, it includes all life except some or all types of bacteria.
At the very end of Columbia’s life, as it was beginning to break up, multi-cellular life was just beginning.
I don’t think I’d want to try to colonize a planet during this period of its life. I don’t think you could get crops to grow unless you brought along various soil denizens that would help make the soil and its potential nutrients usable by your plants. But then, I don’t have a degree in biology or agriculture, either, so maybe I’m way off base there.
I’d like to take a course in paleogeology, I just don’t know where I’d have to go to find one.
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