Ditto for The Great Oxygen Catastrophe, when photosynthesis destroyed the then prevailing atmosphere. Isn't an oxygen based system more energy efficient than an anaerobic methane based system? Wouldn't that accelerate the rate?
Also, if the doubling time of complexity has reached about every 20 years where are all the newly advanced life forms & super-duper supermen?
That's an interesting question. I have no idea. Does genome size in energy efficient systems grow more rapidly than in less efficient systems? Unfortunately, my knowledge of biology, genetics, etc., is just about zero and never increases!
Also, if the doubling time of complexity has reached about every 20 years where are all the newly advanced life forms & super-duper supermen?
Another good question. I've been wondering the same thing. I mean, has the size of the human genome doubled in the last 20 years, quadrupled in the last 40 and octupled since I was a child? Are kids today eight times smarter than my generation? I don't think soooooo. Otherwise, holy smokes: My greatgrandmother, who was born in 1860, and whose knee I can remember sitting on, must've been a Neanderthal!
Development of more complexity means (ahem) a slowing of change to a crawl (because even a small change can be fatal to the organism).