Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior.
New research suggests that an overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere led to the climatic shift, which, in turn, killed 90% of the species on Earth around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period.
And then a set of giant volcanic rifts in what is now Siberia erupted. These rifts, known as the Siberian Traps, spewed massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Worse, they erupted in an area rich in coal seams, which also vaporized into the atmosphere. The geological fallout from this eruption has been found in rock layers as far as South Africa.
Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter nowGet the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. "You get this runaway positive feedback in the system," Farnsworth said. The heat in the atmosphere eventually heated Panthalassa up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit in the tropics, which is outside the survival envelope for most ocean organisms, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.
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