The Implications of Early Plants on Earth

Plants coming onto land are basically like sugar factories, right? They're doing photosynthesis. And the fungus, by hooking up with the plant, is able to access that sugar. So they're kind of exchanging nutrients that the fungus is getting from the rocks for sugars that the plant is making. When you start thinking about the implications of that, it really blows your mind,. Because plants coming onto the land started changing the atmosphere. They started sucking CO2 out of it. As they got bigger and the demand for CO2 was greater, that caused a huge crash in carbon dioxide - but also a rise in oxygen. This made the atmosphere breathable, which meant animals could then evolve