Henry Gee

Now, this started 50 million years ago, and it's still going on.

And it's created these enormous mountains.

But mountains can only go so high because of gravity and rocks and everything.

So what happened when these enormous mountains were created on land 550 million years ago or so was they eroded really quickly in geological terms until it wasn't that long, a few tens of million years ago, they were eroded flat.

Now, where did all that stuff go?

It went into the sea.

So in a relatively short order in terms of geology, all this mineral stuff was in the sea.

And this happened.

It was a perfect storm that happened alongside another major episode in evolution.

And you're going to ask me what that is, aren't you?

I guess I should.

Go on, Henry.

What is this other major event?

Well, this is a family podcast, isn't it?

This is a family podcast.

It was the evolution of the anus.

It certainly came out of something, yeah.

Go on then, so the evolution of the anus.

Well, the evolution of the anus.

Well, what happened was most early animals and some primitive animals, they kind of absorb and excrete all their stuff through the skin because they're very small.