Humanity may have a love / hate relationship with itself, but since things stand now, it denies that we are the pinnacle of evolution on earth. But it took a very long time to build human beings like us for evolution. Many times, life had to be pulled closer to destruction.
The biggest shock of extinction was the Permian-Triassic extinction, also called the “Great Death” about 252 million years ago. 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct.
what happened?
There is some uncertainty around the causes or causes of extinction. Many common suspects have been charged: impact events, climate change caused by methane-producing bacteria, large-scale volcanic eruptions, as well as some lesser-known possible causes such as fungal spikes. There is some evidence for each hypothesis, but it is still disputed. The uncertainty surrounding the Great Dyeing extends to the period and sequence of events, including how long it took the Earth to recover.
Now, the authors of the new study say they have finally found it. The paper is entitled “Permian – Triassic Mass Extinction Pulses The main marine carbon cycle is driven by surprise activities.” Lead author is Dr. Hannah Zurikova of St. Andrews University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“Our research provides the first definitive reconstruction of a carbon source and the resulting crisis, as well as the subsequent chain of processes that result in the extinction of the Earth’s largest mass.”
Dr. St .. Hanna Zurikova, a leading author of Earth and Earth Sciences at St. Andrews University School.
The team of scientists behind this research includes researchers from Germany, Italy and Canada. They are part of an EU-funded project called BASE-LiNE Earth. Base-Line Earth-led GOCIRS Potsdam GFZ in collaboration with the German Research Center for Geosciences GMOR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kill Prof. Dr. Performed by Anton Eisenhower.
BASE-LiNE is the Brachiopods as a sensitive tracer of the GLobal mariNe environment. The effort focuses on the brachiopod fossils, which, according to a press release, have received little attention and are sometimes overlooked. Brachiopods are a group of organisms that have a hard shell on the top and bottom surface. They are different from clam-like bevel mollusks, which have shells on their sides. Brachiopods are still around today, but far fewer than the Paleozoic did.
Many brachiopod species became extinct during the Great Dyeing. But some survived, and a team of researchers found a bryopod shell during a crucial period during the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
The pH level of the shells is recorded over time. When an animal forms a shell the pH level reflects the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbed into the ocean. When combined with the carbon isotope barrier, the team was able to create not only the amount of atmospheric CO2 at the time of extinction, but also the timeline of their source.
The researchers determined that a large pulse of CO2 caused permian-triac extinction. This pulse originated in Siberia, where a volcanic eruption formed a large flood basalt province. All of that activity released enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere; 100,000 billion tons (= 1 × 10)14 Tons).
It is an almost incomprehensible proportion of injections into the atmosphere over a short period of time (geographically speaking). A press release announcing the paper states that “the amount of carbon available in modern fossil fuels, including carbon already burned after the Industrial Revolution, is more than 40 times the amount.”
All of that CO2 threw out the balance of the Earth’s biochemical makeup and drowned out most of the species on Earth. The team used innovative modeling to determine what the sudden injection of CO2 was for our planet.
There is already a lot of evidence that the activity of the Siberian volcano has led to extinction. But the evidence has never been this unified. “The exact causes and consequences remain controversial, and there is still a lack of a coherent scenario for environmental evolution at this important interval in Earth’s history,” the researchers wrote.
The authors write in their paper, “Our findings enable us to collect continuous biochemical recombination of mechanisms, resulting in the extinction of the largest phenytoin mass,” the authors write in their paper.
CO2 led to extreme temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere and fatal acidification of the oceans. The marine animals that make up their shells, such as the brachiopods at the center of this research, were devastating. As the oceans become more acidic, the carbonate needed to form the shells becomes unavailable, locked into the ocean’s new chemistry. Some brachiopods survived, creating a confirmed record that enabled this study.
Extreme temperatures were another major blow to life on Earth. The greenhouse effect produced clear changes in weather on land, and nutrient input and cycling in the ocean. The result was massive deoxygenation in the Earth’s oceans. It probably also poisoned the oceans with sulfides, killing other groups of life.
The oceans, the place of life on earth, became the place of death.
While volcanic activity has previously been suggested as the cause of great deaths, this study is a more complete timeline of events. Then, now, life on Earth depends on the global cycle of nutrients, carbon, nitrogen and other things. In just a few thousand years, those chakras were co. Siberian outbreaks by 2. One by one, climate warming, ocean acidification, ocean oxygenation, and sulfide poisoning came one after another, creating the most intense extinction in Earth’s history.
“These findings lead us to look at PTB
In a press statement, lead researcher Dr. Zurikova said: “Our research provides the first definitive reconstruction of the carbon source and with it the cause of the crisis, as well as the subsequent chain of processes, resulting in the extinction of the largest mass of the Earth.”
It has taken hundreds of thousands of millions of years for the ecosystem to recover from a glorious change in the evolutionary course of life on Earth.
While it is surprising whether these findings can say anything about our current situation, it is surprising where our own carbon emissions warm the atmosphere and acidify the oceans.
In the conclusion of his paper, the authors write:
Worryingly, we can still emit more carbon than the activity of the Siberian volcano that caused the Permian-Triassic extinction. “However, it is noteworthy that even the peak emission rate during extinction of the largest known mass is 14 times lower than the current anthropological rate.”
During the Great Death, it took thousands of years for all those carbon effects to develop. But we are already seeing the effects of our carbon emissions, and we have barely come out of the industrial revolution. According to the authors, it took several thousand years for environmental degradation to develop during PTB, while marine ecosystems are beginning to be affected by existing, unprecedented emission rates.
The paper concludes with what could be an ominous understatement: “Increased attachment to atmospheric CO2 and a decrease in surface sea pH, global warming, productivity changes, and oxygen depletion have been reported worldwide, indicating that the scenario outlined here for PTB Also relevant for understanding environmental and climate trends. “
