The history of our planet has more than 4.5 billion years and during this time the Earth has experienced many incredibly interesting periods. About 56 million years ago on the planet was a paleo-anocene thermally maximum-the 200-year period of rapid release of carbon and global warming. During this period, the oceans of the Earth became acidic, and terrestrial animals suddenly became much smaller, writes iflscience.

It is known that some decreased to incredible 30% of their original size-this adaptation to an increase in temperature is known as the Law of Square-Cub. This law works to combat heat, since a decrease in volume leads to a greater ratio of surface area, which is necessary for cooling. How this happens, also makes the creature well adapted for flight into space.

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It was such a fate that befell the most famous horse on earth - sifrhippus sandrae. According to researchers, initially the horse weighed about 5.4 kilograms, but during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum weighed only about 3.9 kilograms. After 56 million years, scientists discovered the amazing fossil of the jaw with the teeth, which was then stored in the Museum of the Natural History of Florida, and then, for a short time in August 2024, went into space.

According to the curator of the paleontology of the vertebrates of John Blokh and the director of the collection of the paleontology of invertebrates Roger Portella, the jaw of the earliest horse became one of the three small precious fossils that went on a trip with the geneticist Robe Ferlah on board the News Separd Blue Origin rocket. According to the flea, fossils should be small to make such a trip, but they must also be significant. Therefore, the selection of scientists for samples that descended from a short but determining chapter in the history of the Earth: Paleocene theocene thermal maximum.

Along with our tiny horse, during this period of time the most ancient famous ancestor of modern primates appeared. About the size of about rollers, Teykhardin could fit in the palm of the person, which made it another convenient sample for traveling into space.

The third sample was the lunar snail shell, which lived on the planet about 2.9 million years ago and had a wonderful trick:

Mollusk could expand its “foot” four times from the usual size during the hunt - for this he used his teeth covered with his tongue covered.

The Ferla mission was to continue to study the effects of acceleration and weightlessness on plants - the flight was funded by NASA. During the study, the scientist wore tubes on his feet for the capture of samples that were analyzed to return to Earth. However, his ancient freezers served as a sharp reminder of how far our planet went.

Previously, Focus wrote that for the first time in history, scientists gathered the fossils of the "