Washington: Scientists think they've figured out the falling dominoes that led to Earth's largest mass extinction and worry that human-caused climate change puts the planet on a vaguely similar path.
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| An artist's image of savannasaur dinosaurs. |
Some 250 million years ago, about 90 per cent of sea life and 70 per cent of land life went extinct in what is now called the Great Dying. Scientists have long speculated that massive volcanic outbursts triggered the cataclysmic event, but how that worked was still a bit fuzzy. It wasn't the lava itself.
A new study in Thursday's journal Science used complex computer simulations to plot out what happened after the volcanoes blew: It led to ocean temperatures rising by about 11 degrees, which then starved the seawater of oxygen.
That hot oxygen-starved water caused the mass marine die-off, especially farther from the equator.
Read the story from The Age by Seth Borenstein - “Humans blazing similar path to cause of ancient mass extinction.”
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