Long-lasting, widespread heat and weather extremes may have caused the Great Dying extinction event 252 million years ago.
A barrage of intense, wild swings in climate conditions may have fueled the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. A re-creation of how ancient sea surface temperatures, ocean and atmosphere circulation, and landmasses interacted revealed an Earth plagued by nearly decade-long stints of droughts, wildfires and flooding.that whiplashed ecosystems, ultimately wiping out some 90 percent of all ocean species and 75 percent of those on land, researchers report in the Sept.
While a sharp increase in sea surface temperature plus the resulting collapse in the warmer ocean’s ability to hold dissolved oxygen would have been abysmal for ocean organisms, it wasn’t clear what drove the extinction of life on land or why these organisms couldn’t just move to the cooler poles. “Species care about climate, but what they also really care about is weather,” says Alexander Farnsworth, a paleoclimate modeler at the University of Bristol in England.
This preserved piece of parched and cracked land surface would have been a common sight at the end of the Permian Period around 252 million years ago, as widespread extreme heat and drought devastated Earth’s species.The heat eventually invaded higher latitudes, leaving few places to escape an increasingly hostile atmosphere.
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Mega El Niños helped kill 90 percent of life on EarthLaura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life. Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
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