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The molecular structure of rocks and soil is changed by chemical weathering. Carbon dioxide from the air or the soil, for example, can occasionally interact with water in a procedure called carbonation.

Mosses, liverworts, and hornworts are non-vascular plants that developed about 450 million years ago during the Ordovician period. Mosses and lichens can degrade the rock they develop on by producing various acids.

Plant roots grow into rocks and shatter them when they produce mechanical deterioration. Around 800 million years ago, the first complex animals evolved, and they may have taken so much CO2 from the atmosphere that the entire planet froze over in a snowball Earth.

Ice sheets momentarily blanketed much of the earth 35 million years later, resulting in a global extinction. Carbon dioxide levels likely dropped dramatically right before the ice arrived.

Thus, according to the findings, the early nonvascular plants have produced chemical weathering of rocks that lead to a profound change in the life present on Earth.