Posts treating: "mass extinction"
Tuesday, 26 April 2016
Its hard to unravel and unpack complex phenomenon like patterns of faunal turnover during mass extinctions. The methods chosen, the materials (fossils) available for study and the granularity of the study influences the results.
My last post was about a modeling study that concluded that for 40 million years before the mass extinction, extinction rates exceeded the evolution of new species
This was originally posted here! Happy New Year everyone! It’s that time of year when all the summaries of an amazing year of research are coming out, and goodness, what a year it’s been! The folk over at Altmetric have been kind enough to summarise the top 100 articles of 2015, measured by their altmetrics scores – a measure of the social media chatter around articles. All the data are available on Figshare, and here I just wanted to highlight the palaeontology stories that [...]
This study of periodicity of mass extinction was published last month-
Periodic impact cratering and extinction events over the last 260 million years - Michael Rampino and Ken Caldiera.
The claims of periodicity in impact cratering and biological extinction events are controversial. A newly revised record of dated impact craters has been analyzed for periodicity, and compared with
Green Tea and Velociraptors [2015-09-11 12:25:22]
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(212 visits) Triassic,Permian; CH,US,FR,NL,RU,GB
Earth’s history is punctuated by extreme events known as mass extinctions. The End-Permian extinction, 252 million years ago, is believed to be the biggest, killing 90 % or more of all species – no wonder it is also called “The Great Dying”. The big question out there is to understand what caused it, but it is a challenge to get the complete picture of an event so long ago in prehistory. We know that the Siberian Traps (the enormous field of volcanic rock that lies in Siberia) were [...]
Wow, well this should definitely generate some discussion and a bit of research....
Gastaldo, R. A., Kamo, S. L., Neveling, J., Geissman, J. W., Bamford, M., and C. V. Looy. 2015 Is the vertebrate-defined Permian-Triassic boundary in the Karoo Basin, South Africa, the terrestrial expression of the end-Permian marine event? Geology (Advanced Online). doi: 10.1130/G37040.1
Abstract:
The scent from Madagascar’s fine perfume
Enhances ice cream, fragrances the bath
Beyond this orchid spice a shadow looms:
A mass extinction’s lethal aftermath.
When sulfur, carbon oxidize in air
A surplus of ionic hydrogen
In rain burns plants, and leaches soil bare
Wrecked ecosystems cannot rise again.
Vanillin burns as microbes decompose
At high pH, vanillic acid’s made.
With only aldehyde,
Green Tea and Velociraptors [2015-02-02 11:11:50]
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(107 visits) Cretaceous; GB,US,IN,MX,
It’s dark. It’s always dark these days. Lights in the sky burn your eyes, so you keep your face to ground in the hopes that they’ll go away. But they don’t. The air is heavy. Heavy with poisons that make it difficult to breathe. Heavy with foreboding dread. You, my unfortunate friend, are going through a mass extinction! There have been five periods of mass extinction in the past. These represent major phases in the history of life where we see global reorganisations of ecosystems and [...]
The asteroid that smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula a little more than 66 million years ago left behind the Chicxulub crater, but it also left behind something else: iridium, a rare element, which settled in a fine layer all over the world. When scientists discovered this layer between rock strata in the 1980s, it eventually led them to the crater as well, and an explanation for the disappearance of the dinosaurs. But on either side of that layer, which serves as a geological boundary between [...]
If an alien civilisation lands, millions of years from now when humans are a distant memory, what will they find? Our cities will be long gone; our sturdiest monuments and greatest buildings will be dust. But if they bring a geologist with them, they may be able to read the story of our existence from the stones they walk on. In Berlin, recently, a group of scientists met to discuss just what that story will tell – and how important a story it is. Humans have existed in [...]
What caused the mass extinction 65 million years ago?
a) It was a meteorite impact and the resulting environmental crises.
b) No, it was the Deccan basalt eruptions and the resulting environmental crises.
c) It was both, the meteorite impact and the eruptions.
The two mechanisms were distinct. One, a calamity from space and the other a gigantic eruption whose cause was from deep within
Nothing opens up the possibility for evolutionary oddballs to emerge quite like a mass extinction. The worst such
Long before the dinosaurs died off, the “Great Dying” killed nearly all life in the ocean, 70 percent of terrestrial animals and even insects. But this mass extinction more than 250 million years ago - Earth’s greatest natural disaster - is still a scientific mystery. Little evidence remains of why and when life on the planet crashed to this long
Mass extinction and Pangea integration during the Paleozoic-Mesozoic transition
Authors:
YIN HongFu and SONG HaiJun
Abstract:
The greatest Phanerozoic mass extinction happened at the end-Permian to earliest Triassic. About 95% species, 82% genera, and more than half families became extinct, constituting the sole macro-mass extinction in geological history. This event not only
First Evidence for a Massive Extinction Event Affecting Bees Close to the K-T Boundary
Authors:
Sandra M. Rehan, Remko Leys, and Michael P. Schwarz
Abstract:
Bees and eudicot plants both arose in the mid-late Cretaceous, and their co-evolutionary relationships have often been assumed as an important element in the rise of flowering plants. Given the near-complete dependence of bees
Members of a U.N.-sponsored research team with members from Appalachian State University’s Department of Geology have found evidence for catastrophic oceanographic events associated with climate change and a mass extinction 375 million years ago that devastated tropical marine ecosystems.
“The Late Devonian mass extinction was one of the five largest mass extinction events in the history
Mass Extinction And The Structure Of The Milky Way
Authors:
1. M. D. Filipović (a)
2. J. Horner (b,c)
3. E. J. Crawford (a)
4. N. F. H. Tothill (a)
Affiliations:
a. University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, NSW 1797, Australia
b. School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
c. Australian Centre for Astrobiology, University
Palaeotethys seawater temperature rise and an intensified hydrological cycle following the end-Permian mass extinction
Authors:
1. Martin Schobben (a)
2. Michael M. Joachimski (b)
3. Dieter Korn (a)
4. Lucyna Leda (a)
5. Christoph Korte (c)
Affiliations:
a. Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Invalidenstr 43, D-10115
Ancient mammal relatives cast light on recovery after mass extinction
The study's findings are surprising as much research so far suggests that the survivors of mass extinctions are often presented with new ecological opportunities because the loss of many species in their communities allows them to evolve new lifestyles and new anatomical features as they fill the roles vacated by
Shark Week's coming to the CFDC! For those of you who haven't gotten your fill of sharks from Discovery Channel's Shark Week, we're staging our own six-day event, complete with a new exhibit, shark activities for kids during Dino Day Camp, and special digs for shark fossils. We've been pretty busy setting everything up, and the final display is going to look pretty awesome; there's preserved sharks from the University of Manitoba, a microscope set up with slides of shark skin, and a giant [...]
Shaking a methane fizz: Seismicity from the Araguainha impact event and the Permian–Triassic global carbon isotope record
Authors:
1. E. Tohver (a)
2. P.A. Cawood (a, b)
3. C. Riccomini (c)
4. C. Lana (d)
5. R.I.F. Trindade (c)
Affiliations:
a. School of Earth & Environment, University of Western Australia, Australia
b. St. Andrews University, Scotland,