The Massest of Mass Extinctions
With all the post-apocalyptic themed movies coming out of Hollywood, most people are probably familiar with the concept of a mass extinction. In those kind of movies the cause is often a manmade problem, such as nuclear war. However, in the earth’s distant past, we were not around to destroy ourselves. So what happened?
250 million years ago the Permian period came to an end in a mass extinction causing 95% of species living in the ocean to die (Cort, 2006). To paint a picture of the Permian into your mind, forget all you learned in grade 8 geography class; all the continents we know today were stuck together, forming a supercontinent called Pangaea. This is a time after the Carboniferous period, a period …show more content…
Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It goes by this name because it traps the sun’s heat inside the earth 's atmosphere and the whole planet heats up like a greenhouse. This rise in earth’s temperature would have heated the oceans enough to cause a change in its chemistry (Cort, 2006). For example, cold water has the ability to hold large amounts of oxygen, however, the warmer water gets the less oxygen it is able to hold (Cort, 2006). Why would this cause problems? Well, a modern example of this effect, as well as a demonstration of how this could have affected the waters during the Permian extinction can be seen at Green Lakes in Central New York State. Green Lakes is deep and there is very little wind. This has caused the water below a depth of 70 feet to lose its oxygen (Cort, 2006). The lack of oxygen in the waters at this depth creates the perfect environment for a form of deadly bacteria to flourish (Cort, 2006). The side effect to these bacteria is that they produce a poisonous and toxic chemical compound known as hydrogen sulfide (Cort, 2006). Now, as evidence for the cause of the Permian extinction, some rocks have been found which contain traces of this chemical compound and they are dated to 250 million years ago, the time of the Permian extinction (Cort, 2006). According to calculations, the oceans of the Permian period would have contained so much hydrogen sulfide that it would
With all the post-apocalyptic themed movies coming out of Hollywood, most people are probably familiar with the concept of a mass extinction. In those kind of movies the cause is often a manmade problem, such as nuclear war. However, in the earth’s distant past, we were not around to destroy ourselves. So what happened?
250 million years ago the Permian period came to an end in a mass extinction causing 95% of species living in the ocean to die (Cort, 2006). To paint a picture of the Permian into your mind, forget all you learned in grade 8 geography class; all the continents we know today were stuck together, forming a supercontinent called Pangaea. This is a time after the Carboniferous period, a period …show more content…
Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It goes by this name because it traps the sun’s heat inside the earth 's atmosphere and the whole planet heats up like a greenhouse. This rise in earth’s temperature would have heated the oceans enough to cause a change in its chemistry (Cort, 2006). For example, cold water has the ability to hold large amounts of oxygen, however, the warmer water gets the less oxygen it is able to hold (Cort, 2006). Why would this cause problems? Well, a modern example of this effect, as well as a demonstration of how this could have affected the waters during the Permian extinction can be seen at Green Lakes in Central New York State. Green Lakes is deep and there is very little wind. This has caused the water below a depth of 70 feet to lose its oxygen (Cort, 2006). The lack of oxygen in the waters at this depth creates the perfect environment for a form of deadly bacteria to flourish (Cort, 2006). The side effect to these bacteria is that they produce a poisonous and toxic chemical compound known as hydrogen sulfide (Cort, 2006). Now, as evidence for the cause of the Permian extinction, some rocks have been found which contain traces of this chemical compound and they are dated to 250 million years ago, the time of the Permian extinction (Cort, 2006). According to calculations, the oceans of the Permian period would have contained so much hydrogen sulfide that it would