Earth

Now zooming in further, we have this, our home planet - Earth! Madre Tierra, but which is actually a water-planet, the only one known to have stable, liquid water on its surface.

Earth is around 4.5 bn yrs old, and life evolved slowly and started some 3.5 bn yrs ago (based on bacterial fossils). Earth's condition has changed drastically from eons to eons, supporting different life forms. Its CO2 filled atmosphere was replaced by O2 due to bacterial activity (causing the 'Oxygen catastrophe') but w/c allowed new forms of species to emerge, and to thrive.

Earth had seen at least 5 major extinction events; the most famous is the land dinosaur extinction era (65mn yrs ago) which annihilated 50% of life forms, but an even greater extinction event happened some 250mya, excessive volcanic activity (as prime suspect) annihilated 90% of Earth's life forms. Today, life continue to flourish on Earth, but all species that are living today is less than 1% of the total number of species that ever lived on this planet. We're just one of those countless species that made a mark on this world.

Now, humans - the first homonids came about some 3million yrs ago, and the first modern man w/in the last 1 million years. Several thousands of years ago, man had colonized this planet and proved to be the dominant species. Some hundred years back - we didn't just colonize, with the start of industrial revolution - we started abusing, and even killing our habitable environment. It has grown exponentially ever since. =(