Volcanic eruptions in Siberia today are accompanied by large amounts of methane from the seabed, leading to one of the largest extinction events on Earth.
The Great Permian Extinction – Tam Diep is the largest extinction event that occurred around 252 million years ago. This event wiped out a total of 95% of ocean life and buried three quarters of the land in a few thousand years. This event ended the Permian period and ushered in the Tam Diep period.
Scientists have long debated the cause of such a large-scale extinction event in Earth’s history. The team of researchers from Germany, Italy and Canada have identified the cause of a series of volcanic activity in today’s Siberia. In the study published October 19 in the journal Nature Geoscience, the team reconstructed the course of events hundreds of millions of years ago through the fossils of a boy-like organism called the scroll arm. .
“These seashells accumulated on the shallow seabed of the Tethys Ocean 252 million years ago and remained in environmental conditions shortly after and after the onset of extinction,” said Dr Hana Jurikova, lead author of the study. explains the BASE-LiNe project member.
The team designed a geological model based on measurements of different isotopes and the element boron in the coiled fossil. They found that volcanic activity promoted warming and acidification of the oceans, killing most marine animals around this time.
The destruction does not end there as the release of carbon dioxide raises the global temperature and has chemically altered the continent. The destructive effect lasted for more than 1000 years, spread to many oceans, causing a sharp drop in oxygen.
